


Philosophy of the Heart

by albionsbellatrix



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/F, It Gets Better, Romance, Slow Burn, lots of lingering looks, no one bloody dies, so be prepared for that, the university au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-05-18 07:54:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5908894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/albionsbellatrix/pseuds/albionsbellatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke Griffin is a post grad student who decides to take a philosophy class. Lexa Woods is a complication she has no idea how to react to, as she feels years of confidence and control being peeled away by unabated charm and intrigue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Intro to Philosophy

**Author's Note:**

> A little something I thought of and wrote during a super productive day at work under the influence of no caffeine and 3 hours of sleep. I hope you're all well x

Chapter 1

Being close to late is definitely bad luck. 

You're either pushing your chances and trying to seem the person who came at the last minute, or trying courageously for the person who was just in time. Either way, it's not an award you want in a new semester at a fresh class. 

 'You're so late!' She reads a text on her phone, dashing still, her feet racing faster as her heart pumps heavily against her ribcage.

 She approaches the end of the hallway, knowing her class is on the right and the open doors of the place indicate just the same. She pauses, bending in two to catch her breath, noticing a bit of mud on one of her sneakers. Making a mental note to clean them later on and switch to wearing boots for a while, she decides she's done being late as all hell. Late to being early, that is. 

When she steps into the lecture room, she only half expects it to stink like hospital anaesthetic. There is also the patchy smell of worn leather and polished wood. A lingering couple of students filter into the place passed her. It's not that Clarke Griffin is unaccustomed to wide open spaces, but the arrangement seems somehow a lot more dense and crowded than her undergrad classes. There are only a dozen or so people littered about the seats: a couple viciously laughing about something in the far back, a redhead on the far corner with a dark haired fellow peering over her shoulder, a few others looking at their phones in the middle and a lady who seems to be already taking notes for a class that hasn't started.

She notices her first, of course, because she's sitting the closest and Clarke _nearly_ takes the seat beside her. Thick rimmed glasses, long hair tied in a bun and a ridiculous list of writing in front of her.

'What a nerd,' is the first thought that surfaces in Clarke's mind. The lady glances up briefly, her brow furrowed as she looks around before her eyes settle on the blonde girl staring at her. She smiles, and it’s a neutral but friendly smile that has Clarke grinning back.

'Gorgeous nerd’.

Now, this is the chance that one usually takes to sit next to attractive people in almost every history of the world. They've smiled at you, you've established electric eye contact and there is the slightest chance that you’ll connect like soul-searching magnets.  
Clarke decides to sit anywhere but beside the lady.

She doesn’t know what compels her to take the seat right behind her however, she knows all too well how much easier it is to converse with someone you can angle your jaw towards - which works other wonders she’d found. Even as she sidles into the row, she notices that the lady resumes scribbling on the list in front of her as strands of stray hair bob about an incredibly sharp jawline. One to compete with her own, and her ego deflates somewhat at the thought.

She impulsively glances down at her watch, momentarily ignoring the attractive woman in front of her as she takes a seat. It blinks ’10:03’.

The corners of her mouth scrunch to a side as she remembers the breakfast she hadn’t managed to grab in her rush.

’And the damn prof is late.’

“Hey, Clarke!” A shout makes her turn her head around. She doesn’t have to look around too much as she catches sight of a young man with messy, dark hair at the far back. He grins at her through lip-stick stained teeth as the girl beside him with equally dark hair bites her lip and jumps up, making to bound down the lecture hall stairs. She’d never quite liked her name, or more obviously, she didn’t like the assumption people made that she was a he. Not many people know that the addition of an ‘e’ means female and then again, gender roles are a thing of the past and something she’s still unlearning. Her mother had wanted her to be named Clarke, it was the only name her father had left her before going off on deployment and he hadn’t exactly come back to show preference to any others once she was born and yet, the name still never grew on her. She retracts from a thought stream much too boring for a class that has yet to prove itself as far more boring.

She calls back, “hey, Lincoln! I see you’ve grown some hair!”

He grins back in response, not being one for many words since they’d met in undergrad biology. He does however, put a hand through his locks, seemingly proud of its thick growth. The girl beside him, is already making her way down and sliding passed chairs with her hand outstretched in Clarke’s direction. Her thick hair flies behind her as she comes to a stop. The breath in the blonde’s lungs are pushed out by the heavy weight of arms clasping her up.

“Octavia,” she says as she wheezes for breath. The girl steps away, but not before squeezing Clarke’s arm affectionately.

“Bachelor of anthropology _and_ philosophy, Clarke?” Octavia drags the ‘and’ out, letting the title roll of her tongue mockingly. “Really?”

“I’ve got the anthropology, what’s wrong with some soul-searching?” Clarke huffs before sitting down, pushing firmly on the chair that threatens to bounce back up into its default lock position. She can already hear Lincoln bringing their collective belongings down to the second row.

“And you’re here because? Track team not happy with political science?”

“It’s all anthro stuff, but pre-Master of Anthro, here,” she nods with her chin to the frowning features of Lincoln struggling to get his seat down long enough to sit properly, “says it’ll be a good intro to my minors”.  
There is a brief pause, while Octavia fights a chuckle and then she adds, “philosophy is really such a great intro to pratsville, huh?”

“You’re sitting in for fun, aren’t you?”  
The other girl nods, before excitedly turning to try help her partner sit in a civilised manner.

There is a low cough from the lady in front of Clarke and she is brought back from the distraction of her friends to the list in front of the lady. The ‘nerd’s’ bun moves briefly, with the jolt of the cough and a hand distractedly reaches behind to push stray hairs behind a comically small ear. The lady moves with a glacial grace, something a little rarer in Clarke’s collective company. Octavia being the most graceful of her entire undergrad class group. She seems to wear no ear rings, or visible rings and the faintest scent of jasmine flowers lingers where she sits.

There is something almost addictive about being able to look at something without truly being detected. A conscious audience requires a conscious performance, but observing something that isn’t on show is natural and pure in its own way.  
‘And this girl is goddamn gorgeous’.

She can hear Lincoln outlining some sort of course list while Octavia asks questions and the redhead in the far corner laughs a little too loudly as she drops her phone, but Clarke's eyes remain focussed, curiously, on the paper the woman continues to scribble on. She can’t quite see what it says, so she takes a quick look around her to check if anyone notices the silliness she’s about to commit. She leans forward, her tumbling blonde hair brushing the chair handles as she bends in.

Her lips purse, as her eyebrows bow together. She reads her own name printed on the sheet, and beside it is a simple handwritten tick.

‘What the heck’.

She lets her eyes go lower, not knowing what to expect of a stranger with her name on what looks like a hit-list. She can’t make out the letters below her name, and absentmindedly places her fingers on the leather lining of the chair as she leans further. She doesn’t see the attractive girl stand up - or more accurately, Clarke doesn’t see the bun on her head propel itself upward, before it bumps against her nose. In her panic, she doesn't realise her elbow propped on her thigh giving in and her face falls down as she shifts herself backwards in an attempt to not smack into the nape of the lady’s neck.

Smashing yourself into someone isn't the best way to charm them - that's often reserved for after a couple of dates and maybe once you've decided on a safe-word.

She bounces back as she lets go of the seat and slumps, her hair bouncing at the trauma. Clarke winces, reaching up to grab her chin and massage it with slow pinches as Lincoln and Octavia each give her quizzical looks. They seem to have been in worlds of their own as much as her. To say she feels the balloon of her ego pop at having had her elbow slip and her chin punctured because of her own haste and clumsiness, well, its humbling in the least.

The lady stands now and swivels on her foot, reaching up to tuck hairs behind her ears again. She’s dressed in a curt looking trouser and a cardigan partially buttoned. Her thick rimmed glasses sit comfortably on the bridge of her long nose. Her face remains neutral. Nearly expressionless. She then grins.

At first, Clarke imagines it’s at her and she wastes no time taking her hand away form her chin, nearly sitting up to make herself seem more presentable. The idea of her sitting up to look hotter is amusing, and she hates herself for even trying. Trying for this random girl. What was she now? 23? ‘Not some kid sitting next to a crush.’ But her internal thoughts giggle at the thought of the word and how Clarke with the confidence of a decade feels herself blush while watching some ‘nerd’ is totally beyond her.  
“Hello,” the lady suddenly announces. She crosses her hands behind her back, the sheet still in her hand as she scans the room. “I see we’ve got 6 in Intro to Philosophy this year”.

Those in an organisation often use the term ‘we’ when referring to a collective body of power or the whole of an establishment. Quite often, individuals also use this term when they show power, affluence, influence and simply: authority.

“I’m Lexa Woods,” the lady pauses politely before holding up the sheet in her hand. “I’d rather you sign when you show up to my lectures”.

‘Fuck’.

****

 

Another concept that is known in almost every history of the world and particularly that of lady-loving lore, is the inability to date one’s teacher. This can prove to be elusive to most who get carried away with how perky their art teacher’s breasts look or how pretty the lit sub’s face is. Lust or like, the fine line isn’t to be crossed unless you so badly want to place a person behind the bars of legality. A set of faulty alarm bells tend to ring in the heads of those who have fallen trap to an innocent tirade of such sort, akin to fancying someone who doesn’t fancy you but; they’ll still damn well brush your hair out of your face.

Clarke however, watches her professor’s elegant form walk to the front of the class. The waist tight trousers she's wearing cling to her lithe form and her cardigan, almost billows behind her. Her posture is perfect and her eyes calmly survey the room. As legal as anything between two consenting adults could be, Clarke can’t help but feel a little singled out and impure with the way she feels, especially when those eyes lock onto her own.

The moment is brief, fleeting and for one part she hopes she hasn’t imagined the hint of a smile directed at her this time.

“There’s not much to say about me, I grew up in DC and finished my Masters in Ohio,” Lexa seems to preen the audience for a reaction, “ and I’ve been lecturing here, since”.

Someone coughs outside the lecture hall, its diluted sound makes its way around the room.

“As you can see,” she nods upward gesturing to the space in front of her, “I have a total of," she counts an extra head, "7 of you for a signup that should be 50”.

She then grins a little wider, as if laughing at an inside joke she couldn’t share and a tenderness sifts into her face as she speaks. “But that’s alright. All any of you have to do is study the one book I’ve assigned for this semester”.

Lincoln’s hand flies into the air.  
The woman raises a palm to pause him. “This is a philosophy class and all you’ll need is yourself, your thoughts and maybe a few snobby quotes”.

She then nods at him.  
He sits up, unable to stop himself from straightening in his seat as he attempts to phrase his question. “Is attendance mandatory?”

She seems amused, but doesn’t betray the grounded expression on her face too much anymore. “No, but I expect a lot more of you and a finished book by week 3”.

This exchange is almost nonexistent to Clarke, even as she sits comfortably in her chair with nothing else in the room to white noise out the information being passed back and forth as their professor begins answering more questions. She can feel herself straining almost to listen to what may be crucial course curriculum, but she only seems to tune into the soft, yet clearly pronounced words that Lexa says. Her voice is fluid, almost relieving to listen to and she finds herself clinging to when a word begins and when a sentence ends.

She notices the lack of wrinkles and even just the languid energy with which the woman carries herself before sitting down behind the large desk placed in front of the projector board in the lecture hall. Before she can register what’s happening, Octavia is tugging at her arm and her watch reads 30 minutes passed the last moment she’d watched her professor ask everyone about themselves. They’d introduced themselves, handed in a credential list if they were post-grad students and left.

“Earth to Clarke,” Octavia whispers, poking at Clarke’s arm this time.

Clarke only has to refocus, because she’s already staring straight at the professor. She blurts, “I’m Clarke Griffin. Undergrad anthropology”.

Lincoln chuckles from somewhere outside the doors to the hall as Octavia bounds off to join him. Clarke rushes to pack the one notepad she’d taken out. As she bends her head she looks behind to see the empty seats and realises that she’d been blankly unaware of even the people walking passed her. She wrings her bag around her back, and with each step a familiar confidence finds its place in her chest. She swings her last step forward, before coming to a stop beside the woman whose allure keeps a firm hook in her attention.

The woman turns to face her, a reserved regard and a restless tapping of her fingers at her sides. “Yes, Clarke?”

The blonde girl nearly finds herself lost for words, lost for the usual bravado that melts into her as easily as sugar in honey. Because this woman whose eyes are the darkest green, with lips that look as soft as the smile between them and the strong smell of jasmine almost addictive in its inhalation - she waits for Clarke to speak. She seems to seem to want to listen to every word as much as she seems to carefully articulate her own.

Clarke blushes.

“I just wanted to say, you have really nice glasses,” she says the words before she can stop herself. She colours deeper, hoping her friends aren’t still close behind and hadn't heard her.

“Oh,” Lexa looks down, then immediately brings her gaze levelly with the girl in front of her. “Thank you, Clarke”.

She says the name with a pronunciation, that punctuates the very air that’s between them.

“See you in three weeks,” the blonde girl adds, before turning around and walking towards her friends. She doesn’t look back and is sure she doesn’t hear a response, and if she does, she ignores it to focus on the still rouging traitors that are her cheeks. She hears the doors shut behind her with a tough clank. To say Clarke is proud of her attempt at a conversation, would be fickle.

“She’s so young!” A voice says from her right, and she looks up to find Octavia and Lincoln walking towards her. “How is she even a professor?”

“Maybe she’s super smart,” Clarke absentmindedly adds in.

She thinks of the scent of jasmine that she can almost swear is in the air around her.

She's already taken quite a few steps ahead, before she realises that her two companions have stopped in their tracks behind her and are staring straight ahead, the youngest of them with her mouth slightly ajar. Octavia pushes aside some of the braids that have fallen onto her shoulder, slowly walking forward.

She then softly asks, “Clarke Griffin did you just call someone smart and not a nerd?”

The blonde girl can feel her cheeks rouging yet again, something she isn’t completely used to having to deal with since 6th grade and something she feels herself beginning to hate already. She can also tell when she’s screwed and bound to be teased for the remainder of her life. She opens her mouth, hoping to retract the comment, brush off anyone being smart, even demand the world rename everyone ‘nerd’. No sound comes out. But, hearing her whole name pulls her back to the train of how unusual she finds it and with the scent of jasmine flowers still diluting her pupils, she hears the faint ghost-like sound of Lexa breathing ‘Clarke’. The airy, gentle way that she does.

“Someone’s HOT for teacher!”

Clarke doesn’t hear her friends mocking her initially, because then and there, she decides, that she likes the way professor Lexa Woods says her name.


	2. Ethics

Her eyes gloss over the title of the chapter for the thirteenth time that evening, she half expects the words to begin to blend into each other and tilt into gibberish. She reads ‘Introduction to Ethics’ yet again and a part of her agrees that it might as well be gibberish, because she can’t seem to get passed those first three words. Clarke takes her feet off the dark, wooden coffee table in front of her and pulls them up onto the sofa. She leans against the sofa’s arm a little harder as she cranes her neck over the book, pushing herself to read a little more.

Getting ahead ought to be motivation, right?

It’s only been near a week after a lecture in philosophy which was more ‘sign and leave’ than actual lesson, and yet she tries to catch up before anyone else. Not that she’s competitive, she never was, but she did excel. The scholarship that’s taken her this far says so, and somewhere in a drawer with a picture of her mother and a square hat, is a diploma that says the same.

She sighs deeply, getting through the first paragraph glacially. It blabbers on about ethics; what makes a person choose to behave the way that they do. The first few lines are pretty straightforward, she begins jerking her ankle a little as a wary restlessness settles around her body.

‘Ethics shape what we do, what we make of the world around us through our choices, but most of all: the way we live. This includes why we behave a certain way and how this in turn shapes furthering ethics throughout our lives and which ones we choose to carry along with us’.

‘Gibberish’.

It is all factual, just as one would expect from a textbook and especially one that is mandatory reading, but what it doesn’t explain is why Clarke is behaving the way she does right then. She feels almost incompetent as her mind loiters again and again to the crisp image of her professor. Even as she forgets that she’s reading line after line and not taking anything in, her mind lingers very distinctly on the sharp features she’d met for the first time a week ago. She can feel herself turning a page, or is it two? Either way, she reads of attitude, upbringing and behaviour even as her mind replays the subtle movements and nuances with which her professor had presented herself. Pages continue to skim passed her and a 3D replica of the woman in question continues to build itself in her mind, like a snow globe in perpetual shakedown.

She turns a page over, her pace disrupted by the glaring words of ‘Chapter 3’ looking back at her. Before she can process that she’d not paid attention to a word of the 15 pages her mind was meant to be consuming, her phones buzzes.

She lifts her body upward slightly, angling it as she slides her phone out of a tight jean pocket. A quick look up as she snakes it into her fingers shows her a clear view through the large glass windows in front of her sofa. A dark sky threads itself through gossamer pink and the day comes to a close, turning into a darker night than the day before.

The phones buzzes again.

She shifts her gaze, taking note of the time on her watch before unlocking her phone display. A picture of a little blonde girl with her arms wrapped around a golden retriever is replaced by the message she opens up.

‘Party at Murphy’s, join us?’ The message from her friend Octavia is followed by a blurred picture of her boyfriend Lincoln snatching at her phone as the shot goes off.

She looks at her watch again, as if it could ever tell her a false time and it still reads ‘5:45’. How her friends could even manage to begin partying before 6:30 is beyond her and normally, she would join them. Normally, it was Clarke Griffin who threw the parties in the nifty apartment that scholarship money and having a doctor for a mother, had gotten her. A part of her taking pride in the fact that, the former was something she’d worked hard for. But, as the words on the page before her seem to drawl further and further till they reach out into the sunset in front of her and the dull ring of a headache begins to simmer in her vision, she finds herself typing back a quick un-Clarke like response.

‘Next time! Drink my share xo’

She thinks of taking a picture of herself to send back, but decides against it. The ‘sitting at home’ look having invited people over more than once. It was uncommon of her to say no to a party, but even more uncommon of her to be awake and doing nothing.

Her watch still reads ‘5:48’ when she grabs a scarf off the one chair in her bedroom with clothes beginning to pile around its top, sides, edges and crevices. She ignores the little pile of books and spare papers with drawings from a semester far passed. She’d meant to throw them out, or file them away and yet she’d done neither. They’d become a part of the room, as if they owned that particular spot on the ground and she wasn’t about to upset the balance it brought to her space let alone her mind. Besides, she knows there’s an old energy drink can underneath one of them and she doesn’t expect to chuck it just yet.

There's a little click as she locks her apartment door, turning the handle twice and wrapping the scarf around her neck with one hand. Her hair stays in the little braids she’s done the first couple of times she’d read the title of book chapter and she’s thankful that it keeps out of her face as she makes her way downstairs, across the hall and out into the breezy autumn air.

She coughs, clearing her throat before reaching for her bag. Only to find an empty space beside her right hip.

It is then that she becomes acutely aware that she’s walked halfway to the university which isn’t too far to begin with, but also that she’s left her bag behind. She’d meant to get coffee, and maybe keep the taser in her bag a little closer than two blocks away while the sun sets so close to the shadows on the ground.

A particularly patchy wisp of vapour hangs in the air in front of her mouth like a hornet’s nest. Her fingers begin to chill.

She takes a few quick strides; long ones just to hurry her pace before she pushes through a heavy oak door with a little bell signalling her arrival and heads straight into the little cafe on the East side of the campus. ‘The Ark’ hadn’t always had the best chocolate cake, even if some of her friends disagreed, but their coffee made up for it. She’d spent nearly every exam cram at the place in her own little corner. The barista was a close friend and one who made sure the seat was empty whenever she could - as far as not being 'the manager' allowed in retail.

“Griffin,” the young lady behind the counter says as Clarke rubs her hands together before trudging in.

Clarke is quick to spy out the lack of people and something tells her, a huge amount of them must be at the party she hadn't gone to. When Murphy threw a party, everyone went, on occasion even a professor or two. Then again, as she approaches the counter, eying out her own little nook in the far corner, she guesses it’s also a late evening on a Sunday.

Her friend, Raven, smiles at her, even as she begins pouring out the usual coffee order that Clarke takes.  
“And you didn’t go because…?”  
She lets the sentence linger, making an exaggerated look about the place - ‘looking for the reason’.

Clarke begins to untie the scarf around her neck, rubbing at the skin as she shrugs. She states, “post-grad headache”.

The dark haired girl in front of her smiles brightly again, beginning to pour milk into the dark caffeine at the bottom of the blue coloured mugs of the establishment. She places the order in front of her, self satisfied. She then nods at the drink.

Clarke scrunches her eyebrows, tilting her head with a questioning look in return. Raven wipes her hands on the trendy apron at her side and nods even more energetically.

So she takes it into her hands, the warmth seeping through spreading its caress throughout her arms and she looks into it. A fine drawing of chocolate powder spells out the word ‘liar’. She looks up to find her friend smirking back, before placing a napkin where the mug had been on the counter. Clarke is about to retaliate, because really, she did have a headache. Her mind was puzzled. She really didn't want to party. She really just wanted to walk and get coffee. This thought stream may seem in disarray, but the way she shoots back her replies tend to usually be a bit more coordinated. She's ready to spit back sarcasm and a claim to a severe migraine, when she realises yet again, that she’s forgotten her bag.  
She’d forgotten her money.

“Rey,” she begins as she places the coffee back on the counter, “I don’t have any money". She amends the statement quickly, “I forgot my money”.

She’d worked at The Ark during her first year and waitressing had occasionally allowed her a free coffee, but she isn’t sure she can use the get-out-jail-free card anymore. Retailers only care as far as you slave for them, and she wouldn't let Raven get in trouble. The girl had a habit of treating her friends and sometimes, she would forget to cash it in later. Her boss wasn’t always the most considerate person.

“You really do have a headache, don’t you?” Raven prompts as she tightens her ponytail. Her gaze is averted for a second as the door behind them rings.

Clarke ignores the sound, wanting to just get her coffee and move to her seat or just hold the mug long enough to absorb its heat and leave social interactions at that. She can already feel her fingers thawing, but just the idea of having to go outside again to get home has her feeling ghostlike chills and an array of goosebumps.  
She wasn’t too fond of autumn and she isn’t too fond of having forgotten 4 damn dollars.

“I’m sorry Rey, will you be open longer? Can I borrow it off you?” She hears the distant politeness in her tone and it bothers her that a headache should really suppress her informality with someone she went so far back with. Of course, Raven would lend her money.

Raven is about to address the same thing, even about to make a snide comment about her princess-side showing, but she’s stopped short by the woman behind her friend whose outstretched arm shows a single $5 note.

Clarke senses the person standing behind her and takes a step close to the counter, not wanting to block the person off. She knows she ought to let the person order since she was a stalemate Raven could fix after having dealt with actual, paying customers.

“Sorry, you can go ahe-“  
Her words stop short as she swivels on her foot and stands a little more apart than face-to-face with her philosophy professor. The lady is wearing a large, long coat that nearly sweeps the ground and bits of a red blouse peek from underneath it. Her glasses seem to have slipped down the bridge of her nose, and she uses a hand to push them up as she places the note in Raven’s palm.

She says softly, “I’ve got it”.

Clarke can feel a protest bubble at her throat, and her mind demands that she inform her inanely attractive professor that she will, indeed, ‘get the next one’, but instead she hears herself simply shoot back a limp reply.

“Thank you”.

A part of her is about to add professor to the sentence, but the part that sees only an attractive woman holds its ground and ends the sentence there. The teenager in Clarke, however, begs to say the lady’s name.

Saying someone’s name to them has an affect that is profound in many ways and sometimes, begins the subtext of many things that one cannot predict when you innocently begin to identify someone by something as harmless as a name.

There begins a swift silence between all three of The Ark’s occupants, one that doesn’t feel sinister and yet, one that seems to ache to be broken. Because the barista and the blonde are friends who would fill the wooden floors, wooden beams and wooden tables of the place with barking laughter. Because the barista and the professor might have had a friendly chat about the university and the cafe doing well in winter. Because the student and the professor might’ve had a chat about course curriculum and feigned a friendship for the sake of civility outside of lectures. But all three occupants, keep to themselves in the collective company of each other.

Awkward.

The steady hum of the coffee machine fills the emptiness with the occasional whirr or fizz, like the sharp clanking of a typewriter’s keystrokes. Raven soon has a double-shot coffee to-go and another note in her hand. Clarke keeps her attention on the little clouds of gas that shimmer in little lights whenever a car or light shines through them. She makes out the rough shape of someone cycling through the campus square, even through the fogged up windows and she can almost hear someone saying something, but her focus remains so pointedly elsewhere.

If she hadn’t smelled it earlier; the scent of jasmine feels invasive as it mingles in a sweet tangle with the scent of the coffee under her chin. She stands still, impulsively reaching for her phone. Almost every part of her very aware of the woman standing beside her, and just seeing the general shape of the woman even if she’s a blur at the corner of her eyes - she cannot deny the interest she feels.

The pull she feels.

The tingling drawstring she pushes against, which tethers her senses like a magnet to everything that is Lexa Woods.

But soon, she feels the lady fade away, she closes her eyes and breathes deeply, hoping to inhale as much of the perfume around her as she can. The air is subtly replaced with just the scent of metal, coffee and autumn’s whisper. The bell behind her rings.

“Clarke?” Raven questions, coming to stand beside her friend with her hands on her hips and a lockup key jingling on her pinky.

She looks away from the window view, confused as she opens her eyes and is deftly brought back to the coffee she hadn’t paid for and the familiar, cafe chairs lounging about her. She doesn’t remember why exactly she’d closed her eyes, but the warmth in her hands keeps her sated as the dull throb at the back of her head begins to increase. The awakening of a migraine actually beginning to pound at her temples.

“Clarke,” Raven says again this time. a little more severity in her voice. One meant to shake someone out of a trance. Make them ‘snap out of it’.

She finds her voice, a little cracked with how long she’s not swallowed. She lifts her coffee mug up to her lips and takes a sip and asks, “what, Rey?”

“You ignored that new professor”.

Clarke stops mid-gulp, struggling to voice the same word again. “What?!”

Raven begins putting her coat on, and closing up the till behind them as she holds open the door to the cafe. Clarke steps outside, a frantic look in her eyes even as she drinks more caffeine from a now exchanged take-away cup and feels the calming warmth of its slosh in her belly. Her friend turns a key, and brings a little metal grate down across the door.

She turns around as she checks the lock and states, “yeah, she asked you how you were and you didn’t say anything so she left”.  
She hooks an arm around Clarke’s before turning to her again. She inquires, “is she a bitch? Is there something I’m missing?”

Clarke takes a huge gulp of burning hot liquid, before she whispers loud enough for her friend to hear, “no, I’m the bitch”.

As they step out into the frosty evening that spills itself in waves throughout the grey tarmac campus streets, she can’t help but feel beyond stupid. She takes a quick look around them, hoping to catch the fading vision of a black coat or just the dark ripples of hair tied up in a bun. She sees neither and lets the heavy lard-like feeling of dread settle in her belly. Being rude can be quite offensive to the right person, but seeming to ignore a professor is a plain insult. She knows as much even as she begins walking the distance back to their apartment block, Raven’s arm still hooked in hers.

The other girl seems to huddle in for warmth, having only worn a simply auburn jacket over her lithe work shirt. She looks at her friend briefly, as she dodges cracks in the pavement at their feet now.

“You’re friggin quiet,” Raven begins. The sky around them darkens in meagre amounts, as if the dark purple that now sits on the horizon’s throne simply refuses to accept any other colour.

Clarke feels much the same about trying to change her mood. Or, subdue her guilt.

“I told you so,” she interjects, bringing a playful tone to her words. She shoves the other girl away, letting goosebumps ripple across Raven’s bare arms. “A three-quarter sleeve jacket isn’t what astronauts wear”.

Raven scowls, still making a show of avoiding cracked pathway but this time, while rubbing her sides. She snaps back, “it’s engineering, genius”. A curious smile then lights her features.

“Is everything okay?”

The many years that they’d known each other, there’d never been any sort of serious banter. As much as she’d worried when Clarke had pulled all-nighters to ace scholarship tests and as much as staying late working to bulk up on cash to pay her mom back had been such a cause of stress - Raven never let the worry show. Not too much.

She smiles a little bit more, adding in, “not that you have an actual job like me, psht”. It’s the right sort of question, because her friend begins to chuckle in return.

“Just the headache”.  
They both unlock their doors at the same time, jogging in place, dusting off their boots. The apartment building is a lot more warmer than the gusto of wind outside and Clarke makes it a point to turn around and face her long-time neighbour and friend one more time for the evening. The black-haired girl shudders even as she pushes her door open, revealing what Clarke sees as a stack of pizza boxes and pencil maps about the floor under a large lamp. The girl lets out a yelp, rushing to turn on a heater and turns around to wave at her friend just as Clarke is about to shut the door to her own place.

She shouts out softly, “I told you so, Reyes. Three quarter jackets are a lost cause”.

“Shut up, Griffin.” Something falls down inside Raven’s apartment. “And what about the new professor lady, huh? Lost cause? Bitch of the decade type?”

“My new philosophy prof. Didn’t realise I’d ignored her is all, don’t be rude”.

“Pfft”. The click of a kettle resounds and Clarke makes a mental note to make herself another mug of coffee. Even as she stays there clinging to the side of her door frame, speaking across the narrow gap of the hall to her friend, she considers the side effects of caffeine. “She was staring straight at you and you didn't even turn!”

“I didn't know”.

“Don’t let it get to you,” the clank of pizza boxes being shuffled about follows a kettle click again, “not that I know how you care about stuff or whatever”.

Clarke chuckles again, a little louder just so her friend hears before shutting her door audibly and clicking the lock in place.

‘But what if professor Lexa lets it get to her, that Clarke Griffin is a rude, ungrateful bitch?’


	3. Critical Reasoning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a while, but the tough reins of life have been pulling on me. I hope you're all doing well x

 

When Lexa Woods brings the full force of a frontal slap against Clarke’s right cheek, the blonde has no idea how to respond. At first, she grimaces, a considerable amount of strength seems to emanate from the fingers that have just left her face even as they fall into a casual stance beside their owner’s hip. But damn does it hurt like hell. Clarke stares into the glaring dark eyes that seem to push her down with an intangible force of their own. She can tell the woman is angry, bunched as her face is, tense as her gritted teeth are. Ripples of dark brown hair fall about in a manner that is far too soft to belong to someone of such anger.

But curiously, even with the clenched musculature of their faces, a brief moment passes before they loosen in synchronised subtlety and slide into a pair of mirrored grins. Clarke is surprised to hear her own voice laughing along with Lexa’s. A musical symphony of its own.

And then comes the longing. 

It begins all too suddenly, like a spreading fire, like bolts of electricity ungrounded, like her aching, devouring, enraptured need to feel Lexa against her. The other woman slides a soft hand against the cheek she’d slapped, caressing the skin in soft, tentative strokes with her finger. Clarke only has to look up briefly, accept the slight nod the woman presents as a question. As a request. 

Their lips press together, an anchor falls between her legs pulling her closer to Lexa. Wanting more. Needing more. Lexa is gasping, she’s pushing against Clarke, they have nothing between them but the sweat of their own moaning efforts. Clarke is on top of her, watching this writhing, beautiful woman needing her. Pulling her close, reaching for her with the softest touch. Gasping.

“Yes, Clarke. Yes, God,” her professor moans. 

Her professor?

 

To say that Clarke wakes up with a throbbing between her legs and raspy breath, is an understatement. 

She lifts an arm, shielding her eyes from the filtered light pooling into her room from the shutter beside her bed. As soon as her forearm touches her forehead, she feels a fresh sheen of sweat and is quick to notice the flushed kisses of red forming a gradient on her chest. 

The briefest image of what she imagines to be a naked Lexa Woods comes to her mind’s eye. Clarke isn’t the most religious person, she did Christmas, believed in the higher power and maybe enjoyed reading scripture for the lexis (not that she would tell anyone), but the unholy image of Lexa moaning her name the way she had in her dream has her weak and restless.

But of course, another part of her smirks at the thought. She’s tempted to let her hand wander under her bedsheets, but only before she reads the wall clock in front of her read ’15:46’. Staying up watching reruns of comedies Raven had claimed would be hilarious, hadn’t let her sleep too early. She shrugs her sheets off, rushing to get a fresh pair of underwear on and she throws her slightly damp nightshirt aside at the same time. 

Her phone buzzes and a picture of Octavia springs to life. She bends down and presses ‘decline’ before she changes her mind and presses ‘call back’.

“Where the hell are you, Griffin?” 

Clarke is mid-brushing her teeth, when she spits and yells back into her room where the phone rests on the side table beside her bed. “Getting there!” 

"And where the hell is Raven? You two are SO late and Lincoln is eating all the fries we ordered for the _four_ of us”. Octavia stresses the number, only adding to the annoyance in her tone.

The bell to Clarke’s apartment rings, followed by a rhythmic thumping of what sounds like a hip-hop beat. 

“That’s Raven at the door, we’ll be there soon! Hold onto those fries!”

“She doesn't work one day and she sleeps in like a mountain lion”.

“Mountain lion, really?” 

“Shut up, anthro”. 

Her friends had the worst habit of telling her to shut up, not that she did. She recounts the same conversation to her friend as they leave their building. Raven and her are soon jogging and partially grateful for the heat it generates as each day only seems to bring a newer sort of chill to the dry air of college life. 

The Ark seems busier than usual, a Friday evening bringing on a crowd of tired students looking to take a break before heading off for their weekend jobs. A short, lanky boy with mop-like hair works behind the counter and Raven waves to him as they shuffle into the cafe. He grins lazily at Clarke, tilting his head as he tries to balance his arms on the counter and lean forward. She ignores him after a brief smile in his direction, even if he tries to catch her eye. Raven heads in his direction, beginning a conversation very informally even as Clarke continues down to the booth beside her beloved seat. The scrunched up features of Octavia glaring at her are mirrored a little more comically by her partner next to her and they both turn to sarcastic smiles as soon as she slides in next to Octavia.

"So, is this what you call prompt?" Octavia questions, even as she shoves a little metal grating basket full of fries in her direction. Half of the food still in Lincoln's mouth as he manages a half smile with his mouth full.

"My alarm didn't go off, okay? Sue me," Clarke retorts, popping one of the now soggy chips into her mouth. The salt is a little too much for someone who's just woken up, but even as her stomach begins to grumble, she's grateful Lincoln hadn't gobbled all of them up.

She swallows, before asking, "did you guys get any studying done? I mean sure, we were late," she reaches out for the bottle of water on the table, "but we _are_ doing different courses".

Raven laughs inexplicably loud at something the mop-haired boy says far behind them and it sort of bothers her. She turns around, straining her neck to look in their direction. The boy is now draping himself across the register, making vivid hand motions as he explains something to a grinning Raven.

"Hey, late to meet up and taking the blame by myself here!" Clarke shouts. Raven makes a face, before bending in to whisper something to the boy, adjusting her jacket and taking long, confident strides to their booth.

“Cockblock,” she whispers under her breath, before plonking down next to Lincoln.

She sits facing the counter, and occasionally glances in its direction, smiling every so often. 

The group collectively looks to Clarke, as if waiting for her to speak first - to begin the meeting. She inhales deeply, clasping her hands together and tilting her body weight forward.

 

“Did you guys go through any of the course material? Any of your own course material?”

“While we waited for you two to show up?” “Heck no”

“Right,” she drags, as each of them pulls out sheets of paper. A few seem to have notes scribbled on them, Raven’s having profuse drawings and an equation or two on the sidelines. Lincoln brings out a thick book relating to his anthropology course, something Clarke remembers having highlighted entire pages of and having had to use a dictionary for almost every other page. Octavia has two stacks of chips and a hot chocolate glass beside her, but not much to do with notes or coursework. 

Their pace is tedious and slow at first, each of them trying to read what’s in front of them and occasionally bringing up someone’s upcoming party and which new track is worth listening to on the 1995 album by The Antarctic Chimpanzees. Mostly: a litany of random questions which soon turns to a fest of teasing. 

 

“That new philosophy prof though… Don't you think she’s good looking, Clarke? Right, Lincoln?”

“I’ve only got eyes for you, O”. 

“GAG! Who’s the new philosophy prof?”

“No one”. A stern voice, “you guys!”.

“Now, I gotta know. Tell Mama Raven all about it!” 

“She’s this cute, young brunette for our philosophy 101 course and Clarke has the hugest crush on her!”

“I got nervous, alright? I wasn’t feeling well that morning”.

“You got unwell in your panties?” 

“Gross, change of teasing O”. 

“You got sick in the face?” 

“Still not making sense…” 

“I didn't get sick anywhere, okay?” 

“Yeah, but you’re getting sick…” “What?” 

“IN LOVE”. 

 

Clarke huffs, shoving a chip into her mouth, more in exasperation than annoyance. “I don’t even know her _and_ she’s a professor”. 

At this point, Raven’s eyes widen, a full-belted smile gracing her face. She states, “but you don't deny liking her?” 

“I’m not gonna be a child about it,” the blonde replies, trying to keep a confident face. She’s confused by her inability to form coherent sentences and comebacks, especially because her mind is now occupied with other thoughts.

“Pics? Do you guys have pictures or not?” Raven inches her face forward as Octavia begins checking her phone. “I’ve gotta see this!” 

Clarke immediately lean across as well. 

“How do you have pictures of her?” 

Octavia grins. “University site has prof photos, I’m hoping she’s on there already”. She begins swiping down her phone, clicking through a follow link and a few more till she begins scanning department categories. 

The phone screen lights up with the image of a stoic looking lady, smiling surprisingly for what looks like an awful stock photo from the internet. The phone is yanked out of its owner’s hands and Raven yelps in response to seeing the picture. 

A demanding glare crosses her features, as she shoves the phone in Clarke’s face. 

“This chick?!”

An accusing finger now points at the screen as she pushes the phone right in front of the Clarke’s nose. “ _This_ is the professor!” 

The blonde has no time to reply let alone stop her friend from the outburst she continues to display. The ecstatic girl turns to the questioning faces of the couple in the booth, not taking the phone away from Clarke’s face, as if to guilt her. To hold her at gun point. 

“This lady came into the cafe the other day and miss,” she speaks louder and places the phone in Clarke’s hand, “clearly crushing had a too-dazed-to-talk moment!” 

Octavia’s mouth drops open, even as a gleeful expression takes its place. Her partner begins to chuckle as they wait for more than their fair share of news. 

“Princess didn’t have cash on her and the prof lady bought her coffee!” Raven almost squeals, snatching the phone back and scanning the photo for a caption. 

“Lexa Woods, huh?”

“You owe her coffee,” Lincoln finally speaks up. He nods to his girlfriend who nods back, while Raven enthusiastically agrees with an open mouth nod herself. 

Clarke is acutely aware of how loud they sound, how loud she feels like Lexa’s name is being said and how the picture on the screen is not at all private at their booth. The instinct to hush them comes over her, but knowing her friends, she knows they’ll only get louder. 

She acquiesces, “I owe her money”.

Raven cuts in, “and an apology for ignoring her”.

“I didn’t mean to, Rey”. 

Octavia jumps in this time, “you did what?” 

Clarke sighs heavily. “Too dazed to talk, remember?” Raven smirks to herself glad at being quoted. 

A clank resounds behind them and they all turn to notice the boy behind the counter begin to collect empty cups at tables, he glances briefly at Raven sharing a smile with her. At which the girl pushes herself up on the table, folding her notes and placing them into her back pocket. 

“It’s been real guys, Reyes out”. 

Octavia frowns slightly, but stands up and Lincoln follows suit. She asks, “continue studying at mine?” 

Clarke declines, “I’ll opt out, I have a little more reading I want to do. I’ll catch up with you guys later?” 

“Nerd,” Octavia teases, giving the blonde’s shoulder a friendly punch. A little grate of chips appears beside her a few minutes later as a waving Lincoln gets dragged out of the cafe. She manages to make her way through a few pages of an online version of her textbook. Soon enough, Raven leaves with the cafe boy in tow, she notes, but not before making a crude comment about a grilling to come when the blonde managed to get home. 

She didn’t look forward to it. Not with the teasing to come along with it.

Her mind doesn’t rest on the thought of an interrogation long. The sounds of a busy cafe beginning to dim around her as the afternoon wears on into a relaxed evening. Two baristas have made shift changes, or is it they’re working at the same time? She isn’t completely sure either way, deciding to zip her hoodie up as the jumble of words on her phone no longer seem comprehensible. She places the grate on the counter, much to the delight of the girl behind it and steps outside. Her nose and ears immediately chill and her hood finds itself pulled over her blond waves of hair. Her decision to take a walk so close to a darkening yet again, not the smartest one, but walking had always cleared her mind. With too many ‘juxtaposing belief systems’, ‘the melding of the soul’ and ‘critical reasoning and thinking’ hung up like a line of clothing between her ears, she begins her walk with a quick trot. Her hands are stuffed into her pockets, and where there is a hole in the stitch separating the two sides she can feel her own still chilled fingertips. 

She notices the gentle pace of someone in front of her.

The person has a dark coat, bellowing just a little bit above what look like boots. She can’t make out if the person’s wearing a hat or if there’s hair involved at all near their head. Crunching leaves crinkle under her own worn out shoes and the trees on either side of the pathway begin to narrow further along. The person stops all of a sudden, just as her shoe crunches a particularly loud combination of autumn leaf and twig. The stranger turns their head to the left slightly, before taking off at a slightly faster pace. 

Now, quite often when we want something, we see it everywhere. When we deny ourselves a chocolate chip cookie, we smell and taste nothing but chocolate chip damn cookie. A common exception to this principal being singularly around food, is when someone is curious. When someone is enamoured. 

Always looking for someone’s face even in a crowd three countries away is both the beginning and the ultimate zenith of such curiosity. 

So the split second that it takes for part of a face to be noticed, even from the distance Clarke walks at from this foreign figure: she think she’s seen her professor’s face. Or more specifically, her jaw. Embarrassingly enough, she suppresses the thought that she might've memorised a jaw. 

Clarke doesn’t expect to have quickened her pace so much so that she is directly behind the figure. Nor does she expect the proximity to be broken by a shin swinging behind her knee and a strong palm pushing her backwards.

She shouts, the moment slowing to a blur as a burst of cold air flushes down her lungs and she feels herself falling over. 

“Clarke!” 

She hears her name suddenly called out, in the very same moment. 

Lexa’s face follows the blur of the world going up in front of her and her shoulders are pulled forward. She regains her balance on bent knees, a strong grip on each of her shoulders, holding her up. She looks up and surely enough, Lexa’s puzzled face looks back at her own. She has her hair out, oddly enough and not in a manner that Clarke is used to seeing - not from the image in her mind. Her coat is a dark colour and it melds in, almost making it look like her hair ends nowhere and begins somewhere under the beanie the woman has on. 

“Are you okay?” There is no wait for a response before the woman immediately lets go of Clarke and puts a bit of distance between them. Reaching up to look like she’s adjusting her coat collar. 

Clarke regains her composure along with her stance, pushing her hands back into her hoodie pockets. “Yes, thank you”. 

“Self defence,” Lexa begins, offering up an explanation for the sudden burst of action. The wind rustles around them, pushing ahead offending leaves in a whirlwind of motion. 

“That was impressive, I didn’t see it coming at all,” Clarke responds, becoming aware of how they’re simply standing apart from each other in the evening air.

Lexa seems to loosen up at the compliment. She says, “It’s aikido, I did it for a few years. Old habits die hard and all”. She then looks about carefully, taking note of the absence of anyone with Clarke. “I thought you were someone else,” she adds.

“I get that,” Clarke replies, realising her not saying anything at all outside of replies is making the conversation far from not odd. “Better to be safe”. 

“Speaking of safe,” Lexa asks directly, “are you walking around alone at this time?” Her hair moves with the wind against her coat as she accentuates the last word. 

“I walk to clear my mind,” Clarke immediately says. This seems to pique an interest in the other woman, who shifts her position so she stands beside Clarke. “Aren’t you walking alone as well, professor?” 

“Lexa, please,” the woman interjects with a smile that makes the blonde feel a ripple along her chest. “I’m parked close-by and I walk to clear my mind as well”. 

Here, Clarke requests something more so than asks, which she wishes she hadn’t at all. Normally, she would phrase things a bit more cleverly, especially if she’s looking to garner an answer or information. Instead, she comes off sounding like the social media prompt of a site that is desperate for interaction. 

“What’s on your mind?”

Lexa grimaces, seeming to think of what to say. 

Clarke stops the air of hesitation, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry”. She realises the grimace is more so a decline, her stomach sinking amidst the nervous jitters beginning their slow circulation of her abdomen. 

“It’s alright, maybe some other time,” Lexa responds and begins taking steps forward. Clarke walks side-by-side with her, not sure if she should be following at all.

The clean strides and smart attire of the woman beside her don't put as much distance between them as the difference in status. This woman is not her peer. This woman is not a friendly stranger. This woman is not someone she can close the distance with. 

The Griffin side of her whispers, ‘ _not easily’._

Lexa speaks softly, her words forming a mist of warm fog in front of her lips, “I’ll walk you back if you live close-by”. 

Clarke replies, “I live a few blocks away, so it’s alright”. 

Her heart begins to thump a little louder as she notices the corners of Lexa’s lips tug upwards. “I’ll drive you,” she turns to Clarke and looks into her eyes as she speaks nonchalantly, “Us ladies should stick together after all”. 

She knows the world hasn't conspired to place her and Lexa beside each other, that everything is but a passing moment even if her heart bursts with an oscillating beat, that there is no hint of affection in the way Lexa says ‘us’. Clarke isn’t sure if it’s the girl-power feminist in her that is wooed by the word, or the incredibly gay woman in her that is charmed by the use of the word. And yet, she likes how it sounds. Undeniably likes how the woman’s lips move and how her tongue touches the roof of her mouth to pronounce the ’s’. The banks in her memory pull up when she might’ve actually heard an ‘us’ sound like a ‘yes and a deep blush creeps across her cheeks and chest. 

Vivid, gasping Lexa beneath her, moaning ‘yes, yes, yes’ rings in the speaker system of her subconscious mind. Her conscious mind looks down to a ringless finger yet again - just in case.

Lexa takes the pause for disagreement. “Or are you heading somewhere else and I’m being a mom?” 

“No, no,” Clarke hears herself quickly reply. “I’d appreciate the lift, thank you”. 

She pushes her hood down, letting her hair fall about and she isn’t sure if it’s neat or somewhat presentable. She unconsciously rakes a hand through her hair, letting to fall behind her shoulder as Lexa nods at her response. They’re soon at a silver car, one that isn’t too shabby and one Clarke fails to note the brand of. Lexa gestures towards the passenger seat, her face betraying no emotion outside of a neutral friendliness that still should feel a little more uncomfortable to Clarke than it is. They’re surrounded by a building and a clump of trees on one end, a few neat hedges on one side of the pavement and a couple of streetlamps lighting up the dark evening atmosphere. A chill makes Clarke shudder where she stands. 

Lexa is already in the driver’s seat, angling the rearview mirror. She reaches across and opens the passenger door from the inside. 

“Are you getting in?” There is a friendliness in her tone now, at the cost of Clarke looking dumb, but she doesn’t mind. Not if it’ll close the gap that had been their awkward meeting. She steps into the car, careful not to graze the car door with her shoes as she shuts it. 

If Clarke felt her heartbeat before, she can feel her entire body buzzing now. A heater begins warming up as the car engine roars to life, and the leather interior of the vehicle brings about a comfort from the cold of its own. There is a strong scent of jasmine, even without a visible car air freshener in site. Clarke turns to look at the woman beside her, who happens to be looking back at her. 

“I like to heat the car up a bit before driving,” she says, rubbing her hands together. Her voice is almost instrumental, having a sentience of its own, weaving words gently. 

She isn’t sure how long she can keep up understanding the words and not focussing on how good the voice sounds instead. Clarke smiles in return while nodding, even if she isn't sure if it looks as genuine as she wants it to seem. 

_Thump thump thump._

There isn’t much space between them, a hand brake never stopped anyone. 'A backseat has only ever provided,' her mind whispers, not as softly as she’d hoped. A presumptuous confidence taking the place of her calculating intrigue. 

To say Clarke isn’t nervous, would be a lie. 

Lexa offers her a polite smile, putting on a pair of glasses as she adjusts her rearview mirror again. 

The car begins to truly heat up, but Clarke feels hot as it is as the patter of rain beginning outside peppers the silence between them. The dull hum of a radio station comes to life right after and the waves of blush rising around her cheeks are something she hopes she can justify with a ‘chill being warmed’. It doesn’t help that the heat coming off their bodies is almost palpable and the excruciatingly small distance between them feels more obvious by the minute. But to do what? Her mind cannot even begin to imagine, even as she continues to bask in the proximity of the situation. 

_Thump thump thump._

“Have you been a student here long?” Lexa suddenly asks, the space between them now widening as professional academia takes its place.

"Yes," Clarke sighs.

_Presumptuous._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	4. Rise of Modern Philosophy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the kudos and the kind comments. I hope you're all well x

_“So, where do you live?”_

_“Oh just three blocks ahead if you take a right from,” she had gestured across the road, “that street”._

_“Do you mind if I switch the radio on?”_

_“It’s your car,” she had then rushed to add, “I like the radio, anyway”. She had also then felt embarrassed for saying something that, to her, sounded incredibly lame._

 

Car drives are very much black and white. Regardless of how long it takes you to get from point A to point B, car rides are lengthy in the right company. When you’re stuck in a four-door metal tin, quite often you’re forced to be either succinctly broody or too anxiously chatty. As she tries to figure out which extreme she leans towards, Clarke realises that she has a habit of getting into situations that are just plain awkward. There is no grey area in a car drive, _especially_ when its backseat could be used for a lot more than a collection of the lull between her and the woman driving the vehicle.

The soft tones of an indie band stitches its way throughout the space between them, tightening its knots in Clarke’s stomach as each minute passes. She bounces her head in time unconsciously and notices Lexa tapping a long finger against the car wheel herself. The fingers then grip the wheel into a smooth turn, headlights spilling out in one big splash onto the road ahead and the click of a signal light returning to its position punctuating the silence of the indie song coming to an end.

A new thumping beat, reverberates around the car’s speakers, followed by the deep, buzzing sounds of bass and the eventual twangs of a romantic electric guitar. Clarke bounces her head once, stopping the movement as she realises she may be getting ‘way too into it’ and resigns to tapping a foot hidden in the shadows of the glove compartment.

“Do you like the artist?” she asks, not sure if the question was something that would start a conversation. 

Lexa seems to twitch her head to the right, realising only then that Clarke had spoken. She then replies, keeping her eyes trained on the road, “I like this song”.

_“She asked me if I do this everyday, I said often,” the radio serenades._

Clarke takes note of the song immediately, even if she doesn't find herself particularly into the R&B scene. She takes the excuse as well, however, to both look at Lexa and keep the chat going.

“Who is it by?”

“The Weekday,” Lexa simply responds, she then briefly turns to Clarke as if to say something more. This brings a sort of odd joy to the blonde. That she and Lexa could have an informal chat, that they could carry a conversation - that maybe, they could be friendly.

_“Ask how many times she rode the wave, not so often,” the words now seduce._

“Is it this turn?” Lexa asks, all business with her gaze back on the road. “And then three blocks in, yeah?”

Clarke returns to the fact that they’re in a car with a road beneath it, a valley between them and a destination in mind. One that ends with her no longer contemplating why a song about sex vibrates in every base note of the beat between every breath and word Lexa commands.

“Yes,” she agrees, nodding ahead. Her hands rest limp on her lap and she steals a final glance at the woman dressed so smartly, who drives with far more control than she thought was possible on the cramped little roads with cars littered between the university and its endless blocks of apartments.

She thinks back to how she’d approached girls in the past. Had she made friends first? Had she used pick-up lines? Had she swiped right one too many times? Had a drink or three led to curious flirting? But that’s where the issue lies, another part of her whispers. That she can’t see the woman beside her, as ‘just a girl’. Fake it till you make it wouldn't work here. This wasn’t her colleague and this certainly wasn’t her friend. The road to her apartment narrows closer and she knows she has to try, at least. Clarke Griffin would try and if she wouldn’t try for the impossible she would be perfectly charming and polite. She would leave an impression. She would be a damn adult about her school-girl crush.

She’s forming the words she wants to say in her head when they’re interrupted by a question.

“Have you read the course material?” Lexa asks again that evening, pulling into the apartment drive-way.

“I have, actually,” she says.

To think the conversation would end with an inquiry from professor to student, deflates the tires of any charming hopes Clarke had built up during the drive. It dampens her spirits. Her Griffin courage, shying away into the pockets she has her hands in as she steps out of the car. Something slips out of her jacket's pocket; she doesn't notice. Her spine shivers a little as a fresh row of goosebumps line her arms inside her jacket; the cold returning to spite her. As she makes her way to the driver’s side of the car, Lexa’s window goes down and she offers Clarke a gentle smile - ready to part ways.

She isn’t sure if it’s the streetlamp a few metres away lighting up Lexa’s features with a gentle glow, or if it’s the plume of fog seething at Lexa’s lips, or even if it’s the gaze trained on her and only her - but her courage reappears. 

_‘Be a mature adult’._

If she couldn’t take her out, she could thank her for her generosity. She could be likeable about it, she could get some more time with someone she liked. She could leave a _pleasant impression_ as a student. Her heart says, she could leave an impression as something more, but she silences it. And, if it’s because she tries to find a grey area between the two part of her black and white mind arguing against each other’s intentions, or if it’s because Clarke Griffin has no charm at all around Lexa Woods, what she says is in no way an articulate flirt nor a well-spoken prompt. Her hopes plummet like a soaking bowling ball through cotton clouds.

“What about the money for your coffee?” Clarke asks. 

_Great job, Clurk! You idiot!_

To make matters worse, her hands instinctively reach for her pockets. For a wallet she doesn’t have in them, which she doesn’t even register as odd as she looks nowhere but at the woman in front of her. 

Lexa politely refuses, “No, that’s alright.” 

She doesn’t say anything more. She doesn’t make to pull out of the drive-way either, but maybe that’s because she’s far too polite. Maybe because she waits for Clarke to say something else. 

There is the briefest pause, one softer than the silence between them every other time, one that feels more like an easy breath than a pointless emptiness. The woman in the car glances at the dashboard clock and the woman standing in the cold at a rolled down window looks up at the dark night sky. 

Clarke finds her voice, “then, I’ll at least buy you a coffee in thanks”.

“Maybe when the term is over we can discuss your grades over that coffee,” her professor offers with a subtle turn of her mouth upwards.

“Yeah,” Clarke simply agrees. “Thank you for the ride, professor”. 

It sucks to say professor, it sucks that Lexa would notice that she’d said it instead of using the name she’d given her the right to. It sucks that this endless rubber band keeps stretching and retracting never truly hitting her in the face for standing on the unsteady ground of her small feelings for this woman. It sucks that an adult couldn't just accept a coffee with her as an adult, because oh does this woman have looks and the smarts to match and the bowling ball in Clarke’s stomach is rolling on a strike straight to her heart. But, what sucks the most, is that now she definitely owed the coffee at a future non-date about course grades. A date nonetheless, but one she’d rather not deal with. Not like this.

“Goodnight, Clarke,” her professor says, smiling genuinely. She reverses her vehicle, streetlamp and the moon now glittering off its polished surface. She glances in Clarke’s direction, nodding gently before driving off. 

The blonde can almost swear that the woman looks at her in the rear-view mirror, but, she’d been seeing more cues than usual lately. 

_Clackt!_

A snapping window shuts behind her and she looks up in time to see Raven’s face disappearing behind a blind. Taking quick shuffling steps to the hallway of warmth between her and her bed, she knows she’s about to be questioned, yet again. Just as she expects, with a chittering of socked feet carefully scampering across carpeted wood first and then tiles, Raven is speed-walking towards her. She increases her own pace, making sure to reach her door before she’s completely blocked off from asylum. Her keys jingle in her hand as she makes sure to arm herself with the right one. 

“So, was that your professor or what?!” Raven almost shouts, her whisper comically loud. 

Knowing she can’t avoid the conversation, Clarke spins around on her heel to face her friend. Her arms folded in, her keys embedded in the hollow of her left elbow. “Or what, nosey”. 

A rather loud snoring comes form the open door or Raven’s apartment and angling herself a little to the left, it allows her to see the shoulders of what seem like a guy followed by a face covered by a mop of short hair. She recognises the boy from behind the The Ark’s counter.

Raven follows her line of sight, winks at Clarke while grinning and then tip toes back to her apartment door, before carefully shutting it. Her bun of hair bobs as she bends in to make sure the door doesn't clatter too loudly. The left strap of her tank top is hanging on her shoulder and she pulls it up, returning to her friend quickly.

“Who was the ‘or what’, Griffin?” She demands, her own arms folding in place. 

“She gave me a lift, Rey,” Clarke answers. Calm as she begins to wonder if Rey will or will not tell the rest of the group. 

“And there’s nothing going on?”

Clarke is calm even as she replies to this too, but she doesn’t expect the sobriety in her tone. The melted ice that is her neutrality. “No, far from anything like that”. 

“You alright?” Raven asks, voicing her own thoughts. 

“Yeah,” Clarke nods repeatedly, “just tired”.

Raven knew when to ask further and she knew when her friend looked defeated, but this was new, this subtle sombre sadness about the confident, party-animal that her friend is. It’s visceral, but more so, it’s clearly ‘a thing’. A serious ‘thing’. So, she accepts ‘tired’ in exchange for knowing that it’s a ‘real thing for the professor’ and readily gives what she can to whomever needs it as she’s always done. She stretches her arms out and Clarke falls into the hug easily. 

“We’ve got a party tomorrow by the way,” Raven informs breaking off the hug first, “we’ve gotta capitalise before mid-terms!” 

“No shit, Rey,” Clarke grins, feeling better already. “And about the guy in your apartment?” She drawls sarcastically. 

Raven grins harder, already behind the safety of her door. 

“A tale for tomorrow!” 

The blonde locks her door, throwing a leftover pizza into the microwave on her kitchen counter before heading into her room. The ringing noise of the machine whirrs about the place, occasionally jolted by what must be cutlery cluttering on top of it. She digs underneath her bed, thankful that her clothes only line the outer borders and don’t camp underneath it. A blank, white canvas makes its way with little struggle outside. Soon to follow from a nearby cupboard are a set of paint supplies, most of which look new and unused. Some of which are heavily drained. 

It’s true, she’s tired and she’s glad for not having had to walk back all the way home. But sometimes, being tired doesn’t matter as much as something you’re passionate about. 

Clarke remembers painting as a child, with colourful blotches on her fingers, rainbow feet on paper, encouraging words from her father and complaints from her mother about ‘getting paint on the floor’. She remembers drawing in the corners of her middle school text books and eventually on her friend’s arms. Drawing with sticks at the beach during high school parties. Drawing on the foggy mirror in her bathroom after a long night out. Painting all through her anthro degree. But somewhere between losing her father, being confused about school and studying for university exams - she’d stopped painting. It had cleared her mind more than anything, but when the painting stopped, the long walks began.

She’d sketch during a particularly boring lecture, maybe dabble in mixing colours for this or that idea - but she hadn’t begun, continued and finished a piece in a while. Not after life had become more than who she was friends with and what she had for breakfast. Not after the heavy pressure of what the future holds going to bed with her every night.

Procrastination is a proud mistress, she knows that you’ll come back for more because it is easier to lay with her than to face your crumbling values and Clarke went to bed with it, knowing that too.1

The canvas now glaring back at her with contempt had been a gift from her mother, when she’d gone down for the holidays. Its plastic has gathered dust and she wipes some of it off on her jeans as she unwraps it. She takes her phone out of her pocket, checking its lock screen for messages and finding only a few irrelevant notifications, she places it aside on her bed. 

The easel sitting in one corner of her room, is taken from its prisonand spread out, open and ready in front of shut blinds. She thinks to open the blinds, but remembers that it’s dark outside anyway. 

The _ding!_ of her microwave goes off, telling her a cheesy meal is ready and for a moment she contemplates forgetting the idea of painting at all, eating pizza and falling into bed. After all, there would be other times. Other days, right? 

_You really shouldn’t do it._

Her mind begins its own rubber band of indecision now. Every part of her feels inspired, the tips of her fingers know what they want to sketch, draw and paint out in vibrant colour. Her mind’s eye knows what the subject of this canvas will hold. And yet, she also knows she shouldn’t give in to this urge, shouldn't let a subject have such command over her actions. But restricting yourself, only makes you want it more. Rebelling is only in our nature. Becoming immune to that which affects us endlessly, is only nature. Becoming addicted by that which infects us, is similar but much more dangerous. 

She wants so very badly, to paint the object of her desire. 

Her jacket is on the floor, her shoes kicked to a side and her hair in a messy, dirty blonde bun. The microwave beeps angrily, three minutes since it last dinged its complaint. She glances at her phone, snatching it off the bed as she retrieves the pizza and brings it back to her room where it sits on her bed. She used to listen to music, whatever was current on her playlist while she painted, but she can't think of any single artist who could possibly capture what she feels then. 

She does have the song playing in her head, however. The one song that feels just right for the background of what her mind begins concocting on the empty plain in front of her. Clarke closes her eyes for a second, her memory replaying the deep acoustic sounds of the song she’d heard during the lift she’d been given. The thump of its smooth rhythm resounds as she picks up a paint brush and lets her hand land on the first colour she’ll begin with. Her other hand, typing out ‘The Weekday’ in the search bar of her phone’s music app. 

_Skip, skip, skip. Munch, munch, munch._

Amidst bites of margherita, she stops her thumb tapping down on the double arrows of the skip button, when she hears the recognisable beginning of the song from the car radio. Her phone begins buzzing but she ignores it, mostly because the caller ID doesn't show, but also because she couldn't be bothered. Not right now. A content smile spreads across her face as she begins marking with a pencil where a long, shapely face might begin and where its ears and lips will fall into a soft crescendo with its hypnotic gaze. Every part of her protests. Protests at her giving in so foolishly to something, to someone, who won’t ever see her that way. For letting herself make this ‘a thing’ as Raven would say, by painting the damn person. 

 “God damn feelings,” she hears herself say as she lifts a wet, black paintbrush up and closer to the canvas. 

Her phone buzzes twice, indicating a text message. The song playing on her phone is briefly quietened by the notification and it annoys her more so than usual. She reaches across to snatch her phone off the bed again, making sure her hand stays hovering above her palette so paint doesn't drip anywhere else. Her bun falls awkwardly to one side of her neck. 

She reads the preview of the message which is too long to be displayed and so it disappears into ellipsis: ‘Hi, Clarke. This is Lexa Woods, your philosophy lecturer. I found your…’ 

Microwave dings begin going off in her head. 

 


	5. Representation, Reality and Language

Texting is a truly phenomenal way of communicating. Everything from bank cheque approvals to late arrival alerts to emoticon-filled chain messages circumvent society’s phones. The ability to make you feel distant from your group of friends at a party across the globe and yet, the technology to make you feel closer than possible to your fiancée three states away. For Clarke that late evening, it is the fluttery feeling of being about to exchange text messages with a number she could save under a name she could pretend to be well-acquainted with. 

‘Hi Clarke. This is Lexa Woods, your philosophy lecturer. I found your wallet in my car, shall I drop it by tomorrow?’

Clarke chews on her lip, placing aside her brush completely as she drapes herself across her bed with her phone in both hands. She feels incredibly stupid now, thinking of how it would look if the woman had accepted money for coffee and she hadn't even had her wallet on her. How embarrassing that could have turned out? How she would have wanted space to swallow her up. How grateful she is that the brunette had simply refused repayment. She types out a quick reply.

‘Hello-‘ She backspaces rapidly.

‘Hey, Le-’ She backspaces faster. 

‘Hi. Sorry! Thank you. But I can pick it up whenever we have class next, if that’s okay?’ She clicks send, only re-reading the message once. Or twice. 

A few minutes pass by and there isn’t a reply. Clarke feels restlessness slither into her being and she eyes the canvas from her perch on the bedsheets - unused paint beginning to accuse her of negligence as well, now. The lack of steady noises outside her apartment letting her know that it must be late, and her body says just the same as a gentile fatigue embraces her.

Her phone buzzes, the vibration jolting her eyes wider.

’Your number was easy enough to track down on the student list, but you may need your ID to get around anywhere on campus I’m guessing?’

The idea is tempting.

To say Clarke isn’t ready to simply agree to her, frankly put: ‘hot, young professor’ driving by to see specifically her (and return something she foolishly forgot), would be a lie. Because, why not? She knows, the wisdom of every queer woman falling for a straight woman before her, screeches, ‘do not encourage this, Clarke Griffin! Do not accept more than painting a muse!’. Because, it’s easy to paint the heck out of her and then to get over it. To cast aside the canvas, to throw it back underneath her bed. To treat her as nothing else but the chapter of her philosophy book; to treat her as nothing but just another subject.

‘Make it a thing and then dismiss it seconds later,’ her mother had said once, a few years ago.

Abby Griffin had been getting ready for work, her doctor’s bag on the kitchen island and their golden retriever at her feet. Her hair was in a tight ponytail and she was wiping off a coffee stain from the spot where Clarke had been eating - making a mess while cramming for a test.

“I don’t see how she can just accept that she’s sick,” Clarke had said, being as she was then, a little less mature and a little more curious about people.

“Well, there’s hypochondria and hope,” her mother had replied, throwing an apple at Clarke before bagging her own. 

“Hypowhat?”

“If you believe you’re sick, truly, really believe it and stress about it,” her mother had used vivid hand motions here, “you’ll feel sick. Get headaches, chest pains and lose sleep over it”.

Clarke had hummed in assent. “So, Raven accepting that she’s not getting better, is what?”

“If you accept something, you can move on from it and sometimes,” her mother waved her hand in finalisation, “move on, _with it_ ”.

“So, Rey saying a broken leg is definitely broken and that she can’t do anything but get on with life is better than the other thing?”

“Well, don’t you want her to recover? Faster? Sooner? Happier while she does it?”

Clarke had never complained about a cold after that, except when she had one nostril blocked and even then, Raven’s recovery from smashed knee to being able to walk had humbled her. Her mother was more the parent than she ever thought she could be, a part of her father always with her in the way she spoke and said things.

_Make it a thing and dismiss it seconds later._

Her fingers type out a simple string of words in reply to her professor’s text. ‘I can get it from you when classes restart, no rush and thank you.’

She expects to wait a few more minutes for a reply, but gets a prompt response.

‘What about your ID and your cards? I personally feel uncomfortable holding onto these things as you may need them before class restarts’.

Clarke puts her phone aside, its lock screen shutting off as she lays the left side of her face on her bed. It’s a good view for someone wanting to see the mess of clothes building on one side of her room and a lamp severely in need of a new bulb, its filaments as mangled as her indecisiveness. Were a couple of important cards worth having someone she just doesn't need to see so soon, come by? To add more content to the soft spot forming in her heart with a big, fat ‘L’ on it?

She considers asking Raven, but she’d just dismissed it an hour ago and now, here she is thinking of disturbing the boy asleep in Raven’s apartment to ask about a ‘crush on teacher’ situation. 

The sassing would be incessant.

No, she’d do this herself.

Maybe she could text Octavia? Rubber bands everywhere snap in her face as her pride in being confident, slowly diminishes. Decisiveness becoming more her ‘pour quoi’ than her ‘forte’ by the second. She doesn't have the luxury of answering either of these concepts, as fatigue takes full control of her eye lids and the few moments she lets her head rest against warm sheets, throws her into a deep sleep. Unanswered texts the least of her issues with each deep breath.

*****

When Clarke wakes up and realises that she’d fallen asleep on her face, three things run through her mind at first. A lack of having brushed her teeth, a lack of changing into proper clothes and most of all, the very obvious lack of a polite yet prompt text reply. She groans using her hands to push her chin off the bed. Failing to find the strength to get up, she turns over onto her back and puts an empty hand out to drone over her bedsheets. Her hand pats about for a little, the absence of her phone beginning to wake her, just before its familiar casing is at her fingertips.

‘Wednesday 25th June 08:45am’ reads on her screen and as soon as she unlocks it -an eye half open and another completely shut- the conversation from last night springs to life.

Her grogginess is only matched by her inability to get up right away, and she can’t think of anyway to reply at first. ‘Hey, I fell asleep lmao,’ isn’t the most astute response and not the sort of impression she wants to leave on the professor of a class she has yet to truly attend. But, she also doesn’t want to leave that sort of impression on Lexa. The fell-asleep-wallet-forgetting-deer-in-headlights impression.

Even if, that’s exactly how she feels. 

When did she care what authority thought of her? When did she care what some teacher thought of her?

Her eyes are wide awake now, she blinks away the last folds of her sleepy eyeballs, pressing her eyebrows together. As a quick tapping controls her fingertips, she also takes this point to notice that her nails are beginning to grow out a little too much. Making a note to trim them, she texts Lexa.

‘I do need those, I’ll come collect them from you at-‘

_At where exactly, Griffin?_

‘-at your hous-‘

_Does she live in a house or an apartment? Wait, I shouldn’t invite myself over!_

‘-at my apartment…’

_Too much ellipses? Is that suggestive? As if she’d even think that._

But what if she did? What if she was as curious as Clarke felt? Feels? She lets the notion sit uncomfortably on the bridge between her lips. What if. The two words hang in the air between her phone and her fingers, but also in the spaces between her mouth and her thighs. What if. Her heart  does the unexpected and skips a beat. She makes like her heart and backspaces all the way out of the conversation window - erasing the unsent reply.

If you’re going to be replying late anyway, make it a good one at the least.

This time, she gets off her bed. Sitting down first, before pushing on the balls of her feet and looking around her room with lack lustre interest. The canvas and its tell-tale signs of pencil markings guilt her from a distance, her blinds are mercifully drawn halfway down. She leans towards the edge of her bed, grabbing the sole navy towel resting on the frame before slinging it over her shoulder. A half full cup of water sits on her desk at the corner, an empty palette also next to it. She peers into the cup momentarily -just in case- making sure it isn’t paint water before taking a sip.

Her lips miss the edge of the cup slightly. If not for the cold, the shirt from last night that she still wears would have been sticking to the sweaty bits of her chest and belly, but the water now dribbling down her chin fixes the job of getting her amply wet.

“Ugh,” she groans, but not before deciding she’s heading for a shower anyway. Delaying a text anyway.

“Nothing a shower and coffee can’t fix,” she’d often tell herself. She has this same program on auto-mode in her head as she removes her jeans, one leg at a time and heads into her little kitten. She flips the boiling switch to her kettle and checks her coffee machine for fresh grounds. The latter having been a gift from Lincoln, he’d left a ribbon on it and even a coupon for discounted grounds from his father’s store. She’d stocked on the supplement heavily, safe to say.

But. What. Do. You. Text. Back.

The words smack in her head one by one, the bubbling of her kettle creating a disturbing background to her thoughts. A garbled confusion. Her phone is still in her left hand and she leans against her sofa, pulling up her last conversation with Octavia. There’s a ‘morning’ text, a picture of her and Lincoln going on a morning run and a very unusual photo of the closest she’s managed to get next to a squirrel.

Clarke responds with a ‘morning’, a picture of her kettle and coffee machine bubbling away and three emoticons of an exaggerated surprised face. She scans her phone for a squirrel emoticon, feels silly and moves onto the more important matter at hand.

‘Hey O, urgent reply. Would you have someone you didn't wanna see drop off something you need?’

She receives a prompt reply, one that reminds her of how awful she is at those.

‘Don’t do hard drugs, kid’.

She snorts. ‘I’m seriou-‘

A second text comes through, ‘Im kidding, but what’s up? How badly do you need this stuff?’

Were an ID and debit card really that important?

‘Not super badly. Just kind of’

She waits a minute, no reply yet. It gives her time to make her usual coffee serving, letting the water boil further - she could pour it in after her shower. She finds her way around the sofa, one of its three seats on the corner stacked with books and sits on its plush but cold leather, the dampness of her shirt now on her bare thighs too.

A ding sounds from her phone.

‘Das SO vague, Clarke!!’.

A second ding. 

‘Could you avoid them any other day?’ 

She doesn’t think at first before typing out her reply.

‘Yeah’. _Wait, no. She’s my professor. Backspace, backspace, backspace, backspace._

She sighs and types.

‘I can’t avoid them’.

She’d always found telling O about things, a useful way to help her put things into perspective, but also tactfully procrastinate dealing with things. The answer is obvious, but Octavia had always had a way with words and advice. Clarke knows she can depend on her for the right sort of persuasion. 

Her resolution solidifies with Octavia’s final text coming in: ’get your shit and gtfo’.

‘Of my own apartment?’

‘Fuck yeah. Can you tell me what this is about now?’ 

‘Later, O.’ For good measure, she adds: ‘Promise’. 

She clicks send, standing up at the same time as the water stain on her belly begins to feel uncomfortable against her skin. As soon as her finger lets go off the send button and she makes to close the messaging application, she’s stopped by a new message coming in.

‘Professor Woods: Good morning, Clarke. I hope you’re awake right now, I’m outside waiting to drop your wallet off’.

It takes Clarke one calm, easy moment to really let the words in the text sink in. That they’re a realtime occurring event and not one of those texts you send or receive in a dream.

_OUTSIDE? HERE? NOW?!_

For some reason, the first thing she does is reach for her hair and pat it down vigorously as she sprints across the hall into her room. She glances into her closet mirror, her hair seeming somewhat tame in its blonde tousle on her shoulders now, as she checks the rest of her face where a pair of mild, dark rings sit. She swoops her jacket off her bed, fingering its pocket for a suckable mint before throwing it back on the bed.

_Skiddddd!_

She slides across her semi-wood semi-tile floors, nearly falling over as she comes to a stop in front of her apartment door. Her heart thunders in her chest with the rush and the anxiety that builds in her.

“Shit,” she exclaims, realising she hadn't texted back _again_.

‘I’ll be right down, thank you!’ Gets sent.

The stinging freshness of the mint in her mouth begins to find all the crevices between her tongue and teeth and she pushes a bouquet of blonde hair behind her right ear, pulling on her  trousers and then laceless shoes. She tries not to fall over. She bends in on her self, her chin touching the moisture of her wet shirt before she takes great leaps back to her room. Throwing on the same jacket from last night - an unusually self conscious part of her hoping the other woman wouldn’t notice.

Her jacket zips up and shut, hiding the shame of her damp shirt as the door to her apartment flings open and she slows down to shut it properly just as quickly. As soon as she pushes open the burly glass door leading outside, she’s glad she doesn’t have to look around or walk about too much. The same car from the night before is parked neatly on the far end of the road and in front of her, is Lexa.

“Hello, Clarke,” she says, not betraying if she’s glad or annoyed to have made the trip. She extends a hand holding a wallet, a casual burgundy sweater seemingly tight around the arm that holds it out.

Clarke reaches out as well taking the wallet, a soft blush painting her cheeks which she puts down to the chill of the morning air. “Thank you so much,” she pockets the betraying object, “you didn’t have to, really”.

The other woman shifts her weight onto one leg, switching to one side as her glasses jitter forward on the bridge of her nose. She manages to still stand straight, her spine never hunching, her torso almost puffed out.

“I felt uncomfortable holding onto something you would definitely need,” she replies. 

Clarke hasn't seen enough of the woman to truly make a judgement, but there is no thick winter coat and there is no lecture hall around them. Instead, here her professor stands in jeans hugging the curves of her hips and her hair falling in even more curves around the hem of her chest.

“I owe you for two things now,” Clarke begins, not looking at the person in front of her as she distracts her mind from illustrious thoughts.

“Thank you for bringing it again,” she repeats.

She is incredibly conscious of how unkempt she must look, since that is precisely how she feels. She tugs at her jacket, still feeling the damp shirt clinging to her belly.

The brunette shifts her weight back to both feet, her arms at her sides, the hand of one clutching onto a phone. “I was happy to, I hope you don’t mind me coming by unannounced,” she gestures to the road, “it did take a little bit of map searching to remember which building it was”.

Now, Clarke is definitely glad to have her ID back and she _knows_ that her professor simply deciding to invite herself over and handing back a wallet that, honestly, she should have gone and collected: is somewhat rude. But it’s also confident in a way, there’s a sureness in the way the woman speaks and it shows certainty in her actions. No presumptuous decisions or thoughts.

Would it be completely wrong to assume she wanted to see Clarke?

“I’ll see you later,” Lexa commands, pushing her glasses further into her face as the hint of a smile appears on her face. She looks directly into Clarke’s eyes, the sun shines all around them amidst autumn clouds. Both their pupils flare.

Clarke feels a wetness that isn’t water and she knows with no indecision that she wants to be commanded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1.The use of 'professor/the other woman' instead of Lexa's name is intentional a.k.a Clarke is angsty and confused.  
> 2\. hope you're all doing well in light of recent events x


	6. Modern Physics

 

In most societies it is considered rude to not invite someone who is in close proximity to your home, into it. This is usually proceeded by an offering of either some only-3-day-old cake or a beverage. But mostly, it’s the polite gesture that’s focussed on. If things go right, relationships strengthen and in most cases, deepen. Inappropriate or not, there’s bound to be an outcome of some sort. 

“Would you like to come inside for a coffee?” Clarke asks, just as the woman in front of her steps back.

The brunette’s resolve softens, a straight line now where her lips rested easy. Hesitation.

A part of Clarke berates herself already for having suggested it. Was the woman judging her? Would the woman judge her messy home? Was she judging her messy appearance in comparison to her polished self? Thinking her grossly stupid for inviting someone who is essentially a stranger, into her own home?

Had she thrown the pizza box away last night?!

It’s as if she’s expected to refuse and as if sensing the expectation, the woman finally speaks.

“Alright,” she says and steps forward, closer, “but I will have to excuse myself soon”.

She truly hesitates this time, her lips parted, a stray breath midair escaping her as she nearly stands face to face with Clarke. Her eyes flit briefly to the space between them, ever so briefly.

There is still a pause, before she slowly adds, “as I have a… meeting”. 

She seems to fumble with the word, pronouncing each letter oddly, but settles on it firmly nonetheless.

“I hope I’m not imposing,” a quick interjection follows.

Clarke isn’t completely daft, she notices the pauses, she notices the words being used and she most certainly knows when someone doesn’t want to spend too much time with her.

_A meeting? Psht._

She pushes open the entrance to the apartment building, its heavy mass weighing on her right palm even as she holds it open for her professor to walk through. The regret in her mind over the appropriateness of having invited an academic professor weighs heavier, but like the fall before an eventual drop into nothingness - it’s already done. She feels conscious of the jacket she’s wearing, of the shirt beneath it not covering her ass and the jeans she’d jumped into making the same look odd. She leads, the walk not being long enough for them to have a proper conversation but a door creak later, not one long enough to share silence in either.

Clarke immediately eyes her kitchen counter, breathing an inner sigh of relief at the absence of a pizza box or dishes. Her eyes flick to the open door of her room and she hopes that her canvas isn’t totally visible, even with a wall in the way, the idea of her muse seeing herself on a canvas wrenches the blonde into an anxiety of itself. Even if only a pending, incomplete canvas.

She can see the outline of Canvas-Lexa’s eyes from where she stands. 

_SHIT._

She turns around to face the very same real eyes, a deep forest green permeating her own blue waters. 

_HOLY SHIT._

She knows she has to offer the woman a seat and with one side of her sofa full of books there are only the two faultlessly close seats in the centre that she can provide. She gestures, offhandedly, keeping her back to where she thinks she can cover any glimpse of her canvas.

Her guest nods, upward instead of down. She comments, “You have a nice place here, Clarke”.

“Thank you, profes-“ Clarke makes to take of her jacket as she speaks.

“Lexa, please,” the woman intervenes. “You don’t have to be so formal”. 

Clarke uses how taken off-hand she feels to remember she cannot actually remove her jacket with the state of clothing she’s in underneath. The fact that she had even remembered to put on pants being a huge deal at this point, not that looking at the gorgeous lady in front of her makes her want to do otherwise. Want so badly otherwise.

_Lexa._

It feels odd to reclaim the name, to use it so vividly in her thoughts and with the image she’s attached to the person it belongs to. Using something as personal as a name: it creates intimacy, it creates a connection.

Clarke smiles, making her way to the kitchen counter as her guest takes a careful, poised seat on the sofa. _Her_ sofa. In _her_ apartment. Lexa angles her body then, so she can face Clarke, an arm resting easily on the head of the sofa’s cushioning - as if she had been there and sat there many times before. 

“Coffee - black? Creamer? Sugars?” Clarke requests, training from The Ark immediately kicking in. 

Raven had always been the better of both of them at picking up training and tutorials. They’d spent one evening pretending to pour coffee till Clarke had gotten a hang of it. Raven couldn’t pretend to be grumpy if she’d tried when Clarke added milk before coffee and foam before all else and presented what she’d thought was a ‘cappuccino’. It wasn’t long before they’d begun competitive coffee art competitions at The Ark, most of which their manager Kane at the time hadn’t been privy to. 

“Black, two sugars,” Lexa responds. The image of impressing her guest with foam art evaporates with the steam blowing off the kettle beside her. 

Clarke is quick to pour the coffee, making sure to not overdo her coffee to water ratio before plonking in two sugar cubes. As she brings the cup out in both hands, she notices the single dried smudge of paint on her left thumb’s nail and becomes acutely aware of her state of hygiene. She pulls off just-got-out-of-bed-but-looks-good very well, but it doesn't change the fact that she still hasn't washed face or got deodorant on. 

“I just need to freshen up a little. I’ll be right back, okay?” She asks, feeling her neck getting red at even just having to ask at all. 

Lexa had just taken the cup from Clarke’s hands, she immediately lets it settle on the coffee table in front of her as concern paints her face. 

“Did I wake you up?” 

Clarke’s retaliates, "No, no!" 

Her hands move with her mouth as she waves nonchalantly saying, "I was awake”. She walks back towards the kitchen, placing grounds in another mug for herself, that she doesn't quite pour water into yet. “I just need to take a quick shower”. 

Lexa nods, agreeing, “of course”. She turns around, reaching for her cup again as if to give Clarke the space she needs. 

Not sure if she wants to wait around to hear what the woman has to say about her coffee, Clarke leaves with careful steps, but as soon as she is out of view she runs on the tips of her toes - rushing. She pulls out fresh clothes from her closet. A sweater? No. A shirt, button down? No. A buttonless shirt with a bit of a low neck? Yeah, okay, whatever. She tells herself that she’s rushing even if she knows how confident she looks and feels in that particular shirt - she’s in a rush here, okay? 

The smell of coffee beans, jasmine perfume and the acrylic paints in her room are still fresh in her nostrils when she jumps into the shower. Forgetting to take a shower cap, she angles her head away from the spray of hot water pelting her skin. In record time, not taking more than 6 minutes, she jumps out of the shower, lathering moisturiser on her face, shoving a toothbrush in her mouth and spritzing her hair with an expensive perfume her mother had given her.

“Use it, there’s no point saving it forever,” Abby Griffin had said. “You’re always saving things for later, Clarke honey”.

“I’m an _artiste_ , mom. I’m not going to waste expensive perfume!” Clarke had retorted.

She’d only worn it once to her bachelor’s graduation before today.

She spritzes on another spray, before deciding that anymore and Lexa would be aware that she’d put on perfume for her. The same idea, makes her heart thump a little. She looks at herself once in the foggy bathroom mirror, wiping it with the base of her palm. A blonde-haired woman stares back at her, she smiles, smirks then tussles her hair a little. A nod at the low neck of her shirt is all she gives, before walking back to her guest. She looks down at her father’s watch, now strapped smartly to her left wrist. 

_Only kept her waiting for 10 minutes! Total record!_

Lexa turns her head around, still sipping her coffee, as she hears Clarke’s footsteps. 

“This coffee tastes great,” she says, taking another sip. The still rising vapour, fogging up her glasses a little. 

 “They’re arabica,” Clarke informs. 

She stands awkwardly now, her own cup of coffee in her hands, figuring out where she’s to sit. The only other seat, right next to Lexa, leaves her not much space to move without touching the other woman. Lexa notices, she guesses, as the woman edges further into her seat not that it could make much space and she takes the prompt to sit down next to her, angling herself as well.

“So, how long have you been here?” She asks next, still taking delicate sips of coffee. Her hair spills in waves across her chin when she angles her face down to touch the cup with her lips. Clarke pretends not to admire it. 

“My mom helped me get this place four years ago when I started my undergrad in anthropology,” she replies. Almost forgetting to drink her own coffee, let alone breathe. “What about you?” 

“I think I’ve already mentioned in class that I finished my masters in Ohio?” Lexa starts, just as Clarke begins nodding in assent. “Yes, so I was teaching at the neighbouring town’s college for a few years while studying”.

She adds, “I’m pretty new to this place in ways”. 

And she isn’t lying, because having her heart simmer into the coffee cup in front of her lips is new to her. Having the attentions of someone so delicately pretty and yet so confident in carrying themselves with her, is new. But having an interest she knows she doesn’t want to encourage too much in someone who is literally her student, is something that she has no experience with whatsoever. She notices the light fruity smell in the air near the blonde and the way the lady’s eyes glance at her every so often from the rim between their cups of hot joe. But it’s a definite lie to say that these brief looks don’t thrill her, don’t make an excitement she hadn’t felt in so long seethe in her stomach. Tickle the inside of her throat. Flutter around her belly.

Clarke smirks, all bright teeth and shining deep sea eyes. The butterflies in Lexa’s stomach make her swallow a heavy gulp of burning coffee as she averts her gaze. She isn’t sure if Clarke knows how she looks at and talks to people - how she looks at Lexa in that moment. A charming, daring gaze and yet, a soft curiosity behind it. One she knows, she shouldn't desire. One she doesn’t know if, the other girl shares. 

“Where are you from?” 

“DC”. “Oh, I remember now, sorry!” 

“Not at all, where are you from?” “Seattle”.

“Huge city, what brought you out here?” 

“DC is the hugest, but it’s not too bad living here. My mom went to college here, she knows the landlord”. 

“I can tell, look at this place!” 

“Hey, I do pay rent!”

They share a laugh. They share a look.

“Thank you for bringing my wallet over, again”. 

“I was happy to, it’s happened to me before”.

“Really?”

“No”. 

Clarke laughs wholeheartedly this time, not conscious of the way her eyes shut sometimes when she finds something really funny. She relaxes, feeling more like she’s talking to an old friend than a ‘somewhat stranger’.

“So, why philosophy?” Lexa asks, placing her cup carefully on the coffee table. “I don’t mean to go all professor on you,” she dismisses next, shaking her head side to side.

This brings a chuckle from Clarke, her blonde hair bouncing along with her… well, the shirt did well for her assets.

“Knowing more about how people think, about how I think in relation to that is an interesting thing, I think,” Clarke begins, looking off at the large window in front of them, a perfect view of the sky and the tops and middles of a few buildings in sight. “I’m not being tested am I?” 

“Maybe,” Lexa says seriously, not betraying a smile, playing along. Her idle fingers fiddle with the stitches on the inside of her sweater. 

“It’s an interesting study,” she says, just to add a bit more substance to the conversation that still feels like the whispers between two shy playground kids.

Lexa feels sort of restless, what with no longer having a cup to hold onto and actively telling herself not to stare downwards. To not make it obvious that Clarke’s very generous body has alerted her to its presence. She finds her hand moving to grasp the analogue watch on her right wrist. She looks down, taking note of the time, realising with a bit of relief and a slight tinge of remorse that she does have a ‘thing’ to get to. 

Her hands clasp together, business-like. “Thank you for the coffee, but I do have to go now”. 

She brings out her phone, however, as an idea cements itself in her imagination.

“I’m meeting someone at Polis Avenue, could you show me where that is?” She pulls up her map application, where the address she needs to go to is already typed in and promptly erases it. Clearing her history in one click before presenting her phone.

“Still a bit too new to some places here,” she admits sheepishly. 

Clarke turns in her seat, taking the phone in her hand with permission before zooming in on an area on the map. Her attention is focussed entirely on the map. Lexa’s attention, fixates on the brush of their arms. Then Clarke sits closer, pointing to something on the map that she pretends to nod at. Their knees touch, fabric against fabric and the minuscule amount of warmth she feels off of it, makes the blood in Lexa’s face rise to her cheeks entirely.

She doesn’t want to leave just yet, not so soon and not so suddenly. 

A fresh stream of sunlight pours in through the morning windows and falls straight onto the side of Clarke’s face exposed to the bright day outside. Part of her face remains in a dimly lit shadow, her eyes becoming a deep, romantic sea blue and her lips casting a soft shadow over her chin. Lexa’s heart fixes itself firmly in her chest, pounding in her ears gently as she licks her lips unconsciously. To say Clarke Griffin looks like heaven on earth, is an understatement. Her features pool in with the light so easily, melding prettily into each other in a way that makes the butterflies in Lexa’s stomach twitch relentlessly. She cannot deny her attraction to the lady, but to appreciate the true beauty of how aesthetically pleasing her features are as well? It brings a whole other level of awareness to her senses. 

Goosebumps caress themselves in swathes on her neck and the back of her arms.

And she can’t even bother looking at Clarke’s cleavage when the blonde turns to face her, because this view of her face, so close and yet so beautifulis one that she can’t think to spoil the image of. Not even with her own hand. As much as she wants to reach out and touch her. Feel if her skin is truly as soft as it looks. 

She knows, she won’t get this moment back. 

Where the world outside is just a jumble of numbers and letters and obligations, but here the universe pauses in clouds of lilac radiance. This moment where she gets to look at someone the back of her mind tells her she’s not supposed to look at so fondly. So tenderly. This moment she can’t come back to. The one in which, only they exist. Right now, right here, looking at only each other. 

She knows then, with no doubt, that she _really_ likes this girl. Maybe a little too much. 

The air between them feels electric and Lexa lets out a breath she doesn't realise she’s been holding. Her eyes remain fixed on Clarke, who returns the look.

“So, yeah, it’s right there,” Clarke says softly, not looking anywhere at the map. 

“Yes, I appreciate it,” Lexa whispers, not aware of how quietly she's speaking as she too gazes attentively at the only thing that isn’t a map - her phone limp and pointless in her hand as it lowers onto her lap. 

Presumptions aside, Clarke stares at her till Lexa’s mouth goes dry. Lexa licks her lips again, and this time,

she leans in.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you're all well x


	7. Paradoxes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the kudos and comments! hope you've all been well x

Paradoxes are statements that may sound just and rational, but in truth contradict themselves. In mathematics, paradoxes have made people go back, redo and even rewrite entire subcategories of a subject simply because one thing cancelled out the other.

Lexa’s subconscious mind would have thought of the paradox between her and something she doesn’t want to desire. The paradox of wanting to ravage something, that in turn could savage you into nothingness when it goes wrong. But, Lexa’s conscious mind instead, reaches out with a gentle finger and thumb to sit on Clarke’s cheek. 

She plucks the stray blonde eyelash she sees beneath the woman’s left eye as Clarke freezes in place. Her breath seems to hitch, at least, Lexa thinks so.

“Sorry,” Lexa says. “Eyelash”. 

Her palm faces the ceiling, its finger holding out the fallen follicle. 

Clarke seems to take the event in slowly, noticing the eyelash and then carefully making to pick it up with her fingers. 

“No!” 

Lexa moves her hand away, making sure to not drop the eyelash. Beams of sunlight inch across her hand, collecting in-between her knuckles.

Clarke looks up confused, her hand lowering. 

She grins as she asks, “Can’t I have my own eyelash?” 

Lexa can feel her heart pick up its pace just a little, her mind taking in glinting eyes and shiny smiles. She brings the finger back between them. 

“You can’t take it from the person who picks it up”.

Clarke leans closer, shuffling in her seat as she does so. Her chest is slightly closer to the hand Lexa still holds out and she does not fail to notice. How close they sit isn’t problematic to her, and in the back of her mind she thanks the stack of books beside Clarke for pushing them this close. For this lack of space between them.

“Do I just make a wish and blow?” The blonde questions at first. “ _Or_ do you have a funny tradition about that too?” 

Lexa feels a grin spread across her own face, not ignoring the faint snark in the question. She does a subtle, yet stern shake of her head to indicate a ’no’. Clarke bends in a little closer, the middle of her chest now brushing against the back of Lexa’s hand briefly, her face just a breath away and her lips forming an oval as she blows. 

She then looks up, still where her body is positioned. Her lips look soft at the distance Lexa sees them at, and the perspective of seeing the blonde gaze up at her does no good for the smoking lit fire of the matchstick in her belly.

Clarke asks, her voice soft and airy, “Was that okay, professor?” 

Lexa’s resolve stiffens. 

She feels discomfort in the core of her being. The steady excitement building in her deflates into a flat tire of disappointment. She knows she’s only just had the lady say her name and not her title, but the separation it puts between them distances her. Reminds her that she shouldn't be holding out an eyelash expecting Clarke to close her eyes and make a wish, instead of looking up at her while she blows the small hair away. Reminds her that they shouldn't be sitting so carelessly with limbs brushing every so often. So familiarly with each other. She’d been approached before, she’d noticed people’s crushes and even the stare of some of her own colleagues - but she’d rejected anything as soon as it began. 

She’d said ‘no’. 

She’d stopped their lingering curiosities in their tracks. She couldn't mix her personal life with her work. She had to remain professional. But there she was, having feelings for everything she said no to. Everything she had to say no to.

She hates it that Clarke even then, only seems to see her as ‘Professor Woods’. Hadn’t she told the blonde to call her by her first name? The illusory setting she’d built around her fades to too many minutes past leave-o’clock. 

“No, it wasn’t okay,” she announces. “You didn’t close your eyes. Your wish won’t work out now”. 

She knows it sounds rude, but can’t stop the spite leaking into her words, silly as the topic is.

Clarke looks up, taking note of her standing guest. 

“You’re leaving now, I’m guessing?”

“Yes,” Lexa says, “I’ll see you next week. It’s week three and my classes resume”. 

Clarke simply nods, feeling stunned by the change in demeanour. Lexa is already walking towards the door, when she hears Clarke get up from the sofa and make her way over as well.

She turns around, pulling her sweater a bit lower over her jeans and offers, “Thank you for the coffee”. 

She then looks around pointedly as if to gesture and simply says, “And for inviting me in”.

Her mind begins to feel numb, the signals that she can’t tell are real or not real, clashing as this blonde woman stands innocently in front of her. It makes her feel guilty to see the jolted expression on Clarke’s face, but she has somewhere to get and the discomfort won’t let her loiter about with someone just because she has feelings they won’t accept. Her pride won’t let her behave like a paradoxically sickly puppy. 

There’s a whispered bye from each of them, the exchange being incredibly frank before the door shuts behind Clarke. She leans against it, slumping till she slides to sitting on the floor. She can’t help but feel anxious, even concerned. 

‘Did I do something wrong? Why did she leave like that?’

It isn’t that the woman had felt hostile form the very beginning, she’d been friendly and nice. She thinks about the closeness they’d sat in and the childish play at blowing eyelashes they’d just had - Lexa had even been almost _too_ intimate. Lexa had placed her finge-

_Thump! Thump!_

She jumps, her shoulders jerking as she gets off the floor. She hadn’t expected the hard knocks against her door and it startles her how close her ears had been to the offending raucous. Then, a familiar rap of knocks taps against the door.

She sighs, knowing exactly who it is as she unlocks her door, almost tired of pushing on the handle by now. Raven stares back at her from the open hallway, her face all smirk and no doubt. She carries a mug of something oddly bubbly yet steaming at the same time, taking loud, obnoxious sips from it as she walks into the apartment. She then hastily looks about the living room, scouring the floor and then the corners of odd pieces of furniture before turning around to face her friend. 

The door clicks shut, before Clarke turns around, her eyes shut as she prepares herself for what she expects to be an onslaught.

“So, how long did you guys bang?” Raven asks, her eyes wide open as she bites down on her lip soon after, expectant.

The blonde sighs. 

“We didn’t bang,” she uses both her hands to hoist herself onto her counter, “But weren’t you at work? I thought you weren’t home”. 

Raven half sits on the head of the sofa across from Clarke, putting her feet in-between the blonde’s. She still scans the room, not wanting to believe her friend hadn’t ‘gotten any’. Another tentative sip, still eying the room and her friend: looking for dishevelled hair, maybe an abandoned bra or a lucky hickey. Finding nothing, she returns her attention to her drink fully for another weighted sip and then, to the question.

“I was at home. Finn left for work,” she answers. 

Clarke decides to take the spotlight off herself, still anxious about what had happened, not that she knew what exactly did happen. “Are you guys a thing now, Rey?”

Raven purses her lips, making a disapproving noise as she clicks her tongue. “He’s cute, we had some fun,” she then scowls playfully, “Also I’d tell you, c’mon”. 

She smirks again, deviously. “So, does she moan a lot?”

Clarke is quick to reply, “Just because _you_ like it when girls moan when you go down on them, doesn’t mean I do”. 

Raven folds her arms in, straightening her back, still gripping her mug. “In my defence, O moaned a lot even after we broke up”. Hoping to catch the other girl off-guard, she then quips, “So, you _did_ go down on her?” 

Clarke huffs, “No! I didn’t!” 

“But, Clarke,” Raven says and frowns placing her hands inside the pockets of her jacket, “You do like moaning girls”. 

Clarke rolls her eyes halfheartedly. “Irrelevant, Rey”.

She then has to reach out and punch her friend on the shoulder, the latter making a sly face at her. 

She explains, “She just came by to drop my wallet off”. Her face drops, the almost magical moment in her mind’s replay of them having coffee together dissipating into the annoyed wince Lexa had given her before she’d basically stormed off. Like a stranger. Like someone who didn’t want to be anywhere near her. The backdrop of her thoughts still wondering where she’d gone wrong. What she’d said wrong. 

“Are you okay?”

Raven now moves to sit next to Clarke on the counter, pulling her legs up underneath her. She turns to listen to her friend.

Clarke looks ahead of them at the two solitary cups on her table and finally replies, “I think I’m just confused, y’know?” She looks to Raven. 

“I feel like I’ve been seeing into things too much. It’s confusing”.

Raven nods slowly repeatedly, no sign of mockery or falsity in her expression. She agrees, “Oh, I know that feeling. Been there, done that,” she points at Clarke, “you know what you need? What you _really_ need?”

Clarke’s eyes squint as she shakes her head, already disapproving. 

“It’s 5pm, I’m not getting drunk, Rey”.

*****

It is nearly 6:40pm when they both end up at Murphy’s outer city house, dressed in jeans and sleeveless tops, ready to get smashed.

Loud, thumping music sidles in with new wave rhythm inside the two floor house. Sofas and chairs clump together in most corners of the living room and in the open back yard, fairy lights and lamps all lit low hang above people’s heads like mistletoe. Some groups huddle together, yelling over each other whilst others lean in to whisper in each other’s ears. A massive keg sits on the right on a granite kitchen island, a stack of plastic cups next to it towering above its toppled counter-part. Further outside, tables are laid out and an older crowd consisting of friends of friends and other regular invitees all gather around it to swill bottles of cider.

Clarke walks in and figures she’d have to find her group, since Raven seemed to have already gotten lost somewhere amidst the 50 odd people packed in the place. She hears the entrance door open behind her and instinctively steps to the right, wanting to avoid tripping anyone. A delivery boy appears beside her, impressively carrying a dozen pizza boxes as he anxiously scans the room for someone who seems ready with money. He strains underneath the weight a little, his shoulder lopsided as he balances them on his stronger arm and limps forward aimlessly.

“Uh, pizza delivery!” He shouts, unsure if anyone would hear him over the up-beat music, one that people had begun clapping their hands to.

“Here!”

Murphy comes pushing through a few people, his hair tousled to one side and his jacket half-off. “Thanks, man,” he adds before he forgets.

He pays the delivery boy, taking six boxes at a time and as he goes to place them on the counter, Clarke picks up the next six and follows close behind him. She looks around even as she walks behind him, still keeping an eye out for Raven. She thinks she sees a glimpse of the girl’s dark hair and routine jacket, but, with people moving, dancing and waving, it’s too hard to tell. Oddly enough, it’s as if her seeing is distorted because of her hearing being partially impaired too.

Murphy twists around on his heel, his hard, shrunken features lighting up when he sees his friend holding the pizza boxes he was going to go back to get. He takes them gingerly from her hands, practiced in the motion.

“Always the surprise entrance, Clarke,” he says. Never quite taking his eyes off her, he places the boxes down on the counter and opens up one of them. Steam wafts up, dancing under the pulsing spotlight above on the kitchen ceiling.

“Always the pizza, Murphy,” she replies, grinning.

He reaches out and gives her a warm hug, smiling from ear to ear as he offers her a slice of pizza. She takes it in her right hand, leaning against the counter and he takes a place beside her. They’d always spent companionable time like this - not too much talk, mostly heart-to-hearts and always the pizza and beer.

Someone changes the track that’s playing to a mellow alt rock band and the cheesy goodness of the slice in her hand along with the quiet, yet valued company of Murphy puts her at ease with not being with Raven. After all, who better to hang with than the man of the house?

She doesn’t expect to have a bottle thrust at her and hesitant as she is, she takes one long swig of its bitter yet sweet contents. Murphy does so too, and they soon abandon the pizza as it is handed out amongst the crowd, for more mouthfuls of beer.

“So…” Murphy drawls a little, tucking a stray hair that tickles his chin behind his ear. “Who do you like?

Clarke in now sitting on the counter, dangling her legs at its base and swaying in time with the song playing. She turns to her face her friend, grinning but pursing her lips. She coyly asks, “What do you mean?”

Murphy giggles this time, his tolerance for alcohol only being one and a half bottles of beer at the most, but then again, he’d always been a ‘chill’ guy. He explains, “Who do you _like like_ , Griff?”

Clarke knows who she thinks of, but for some reason, she doesn't think of the relation or a name. She only thinks of a face with sharp features and she feels a giggle rise in her own throat.

“Oh, someone really pretty. No chance it happens though”.

“Yeah, me too,” another giggle from Murphy, “She’s great”. 

Offhandedly, Clarke asks aloud, “What is it with girls, huh?”

Now, he turns to Clarke, cross-legged as his sits, carefully placing his bottle in the valley of his thighs. He frowns a little, his expression comically serious. 

He answers, “I don’t know, Clarke. You’re one of them”. 

Murphy then coughs a bit, his eyes shutting tight before he adds, “My girl is really pretty too, it’s like I always see her when she’s not here”. 

The blonde simply nods this time, aware he’d repeated himself, but also completely aware of the truth in his slurry words. 

“Oh!” He exclaims, pointing wildly at the crowd pulsing together in front of them. “That’s her! She’s great!” 

Clarke scans the crowd, eyes squinting as she tries to make out features and look at exactly where Murphy pokes his finger repeatedly. She can’t seem to pin-point anyone in particular. 

“I can’t see her, Murph,” she reports. 

He waves his arms around, trying to get someone’s attention and says, “She said she’d come with her friends, maybe you can like someone new!”

“Nah,” she replies. “But you should go and say hello, wouldn’t wanna be a rude party host”. 

He nods softly at first, and then more vigorously as he gets off his seat, straightening his clothes and pushing back his hair with one hand. He puts his right thumb up as he does a little dance, joining into the crowd. 

Murphy had always been a fast mover, always relaxed yet always doing something randomly spontaneous. How he’d managed to deliver pizza back in the day had been a mystery to most, his cap always left on some person’s doorstep or far too many times blown away from the motorcycle he drove. But, it was calming to have him around. Something infectious about his attitude allowing the people around him to mellow down and think clearly if not distractedly - much like him. She’d missed his company more than she’d thought and thinks to follow after him in a while.

“Clarke!”

She twists in her seat, watching Raven, Lincoln, Octavia and their friend Nyko briskly walking towards her. They had all clearly come for pizza, reaching across her to manhandle the remaining box, but they also begin telling her who they’d bumped into from two semesters ago and how Nyko kept bumping his head into door-ways despite being only a little bit taller than Lincoln. Raven mentions Professor Kane being at the head of the group of people outside playing cards and Octavia makes sure she doesn’t leave out details about Murphy blabbing about his crush from across town, even before he was tipsy. Their words are all continuous and blur into each other, the blaring music and the laughter around them - beyond sensory overload in a way. Like a themed circus but less civilised. 

She open up a new bottle, lifting the cold glass top to her lips and taking a refreshing sip as it fizzes in-between her teeth. The drink bubbles down her throat and keeps her steady ironically. Her friends sit beside her, occasionally making her nod ‘yes’ or ‘no’ -  aware of her distant state. Something she thinks, Raven might have mentioned and yet no one had pestered her on why and for that, she remains grateful.

That is when she catches sight of Lexa in the far crowd at the end of the huge living room. Or at least, she thinks she does.

Her mind is alert, yet sluggish as she preens the faces and bodies apart, trying to find that one glance again. But it is gone, just as soon as it came. She makes a last attempt to check the corners of the room and even behind her, when Murphy make a reappearance. She shuffles back where she shits, slightly jumped by his sudden barging in through the flocks of people and he seems to be holding someone by the hand, followed by a few others. 

Her offers a smile to his old group of friends, before tugging on Clarke’s arm to get her attention.

“This,” he gestures to a girl now standing beside him, “is Emori”. 

She grins up at the blonde and offers a simple ‘hello’. 

“And these are her friends A…Anya?” He saunters around the name, unsure if he remembers it right. “And-“

Clarke blankly states, “Lexa”. 

Sure enough, Lexa stands behind the other two women, a thick jacket around her shoulders and the clothes she’d been wearing only hours ago still fitting just as well. She looks at Clarke and her face hardens. She steps aside, facing Anya, who almost has similar features to her, but with prominent cheekbones and multiple braids in her hair and amusement to match the crowd around them.

Clarke focusses her attention on the words she hears next, even if the group stands in a huddled circle, with everyone waiting for the two new guests to say hello. The blonde’s half of the group with bated breath, recognising full well who the angry-looking lady is. 

Lincoln coughs uncomfortably.

Lexa demands, “You didn’t tell me this was a local uni party”.

Anya brushes her off, waving a hand. She then mocks, “Don’t like uni kids, little sis?”

“Not when I lecture them,” Lexa says hotly and this time, she looks straight at Clarke. Her glare is piercing and unkind. 

Anya realises that her sister is serious, she holds onto her arm, offering, “Did you want to leave?”

“Hey, no,” Murphy protests, his eyes frowning along with his face this time. He doesn't offer more to his argument, looking from face to face because smiling idly at Emori who seems to have shrunk under the intensity of her two friends sounding embarrassingly gruff.

Clarke gets off the counter, the smooth granite letting her slide off easily. She stands facing Lexa, not knowing if it looks intentional. If anyone else can sense the tension between them.

She says, “You should stay and have fun”. 

Anya smiles at that, her eyes glinting at the sweet, loopy grin Murphy and Emori give each other beside her. 

Clarke then looks directly at Lexa before adding, “No one here knows you anyway”. 

Murphy humbly agrees, “Yeah, there’s always a few profs here”. 

Lexa hasn’t broken her lock on Clarke and she spits back, “No one would care, would they?”

The blonde huffs, “I certainly don’t”. 

There is a palpable annoyance between the breaths that Clarke and Lexa draw together, an anger that seethes with the soft flares of confusion and questions. It is as if the few words they’ve spoken have driven enough nails into the soundboard of their civility with each other for everyone else to feel it too. Octavia elbows Raven’s side and they both come into the space in the circle of people.

Just as soon as the unforgiving moment had come, it had left yet again. 

Clarke Griffin doesn’t remember too much after that, bubbling with anger, irritation and the slosh of beer in her system now, she begins a wild dance. One that Raven enthusiastically join in on. Thick beats wrap themselves around her hips and she grinds into whomever presses their back against her. Sensual vocals caress her ears, her hair waving around her as she turns her head in time with the music and feels it touch the tip of her toes. Someone giggles into her ear and someone says something dirty as they hold onto her hips - and she just doesn’t care. She can see Raven holding onto her shoulders and bobbing her head in front of her and Octavia and Lincoln beside her, doing a dance of their own. Lights shimmer on her face, leaving little glittering traces that highlight her every so often. She can’t even recognise who’s in front of her anymore, feeling only with her body and seeing only with her ears.

She doesn’t care at all. 

Not now. 

There is only this music, this laughter and this drink. 

Lexa watches Clarke from a distance, sitting far off on a sofa in the corner where a couple keenly make out next to her with little regard for if they occasionally kick her or not. She cannot bring herself to look away, her awe and resentment flaring up in equal measures as she watches this blonde vixen, completely transfixed. 

The carefree toss of her hair.

The easy, knowing smirk on her lips.

The movement of her hips.

The slight peek of skin showing from her deep, sleeveless top. 

The way she dances with all these women around her, not once looking at Lexa. 

The scorn with which Lexa’d spoken to Clarke…

The ache in Lexa’s chest. 

The desire. 

It chews at her, this clash of need and feeling unwanted. But her want of Clarke triumphs her own ego’s disappointment in not being apart of Clarke’s world then and there. The minute pit of jealousy makes her look away. Afraid that she would look back only to be mesmerised again, she nods to her sister, takes a bottle of beer she hadn’t even sipped, makes her way to her car and then finally, home.

____

_I can’t do this._ Lexa thinks, even as she unlocks the door to her apartment and throws her jacket and coat onto the wide, long curving sofa on one side of her living room. 

_She doesn’t like me._ She says to herself, reciting the words like a mantra in her head, the black and white furniture everywhere around her starting to feel more like the empty expanse of her own false words. The words echoes in her mind and mouth as she strips herself down, walks past framed photographs and steps into her bathroom.

“I can’t want her,” she says softly to herself, as hot water pelts her back and she slips a hand in-between her thighs and thinks of _nothing_ but Clarke.

 


	8. Mind and Cognition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what y'all think! I hope you're all well x

 

She feels relieved to be back behind her desk. 

Lexa hadn't thought seeing forty students would please her this much, but it's certainly a higher number than her intro to the class and it fuels her morale for the huge clumps of discussion that would unfold now that she would finally be lecturing. 

She takes a sip of water from the bottle at her table, screwing it shut as she watches one student after the other sign in. This action is usually followed by a scanning of the theatre for a seat in which, she's sure, half of them expect to shelter behind and snooze into. A few bring a cushiony back pillow for the latter. Some use their friend's limbs. She uses her left hand to tuck in the plain shirt she's wearing, hoping her ironing job had stopped any creases appearing from her drive to the university. 

The clock behind her reads 12:00 and the last student having signed in five minutes ago takes a seat with his girlfriend at the far back. Lexa recognises them as Clarke's friends. She thinks it odd that they'd met at a party only days ago. Then again, she retraces the thought, knowing they hadn't really talked to begin with. 

The students in the theatre continue chatting amongst themselves, a few nervously tapping their feet and some clicking their pens. Lexa makes her way to the sign in sheet, reading through the names and looking up occasionally. She tells herself she isn't looking for anyone on the list. No, she’s _obviously_ just noticing the absences of a few students. She isn't skimming through every name and following the letters of anything that spells 'Cl' only to deflate when none of them are 'Clarke Griffin'. 

At the far back upper row, Octavia bursts out laughing and Lincoln stifles his own chuckle. 

Lexa looks up, almost nervously. It’s if they'd known she was looking for their friend. It’s a heart stopping startle, warning her not to embarrass her dignity, something she wouldn't forgive herself for. 

Someone coughs to her left. 

She gracefully turns her head, her eyes hooded and almost annoyed by the late sign in. She hadn't started class, but punctuality was something she preferred. Then again, being present triumphed punctuality every time. 

She stares straight at Clarke, expecting to look into her eyes and feel her chest quiver. Instead, she watches the other woman wrap her arms around her sweater, notice the absence of the signin sheet that Lexa holds in her hand, shrug dismissively and make her way up towards her friends. 

It's as if she hadn't even seen Lexa. 

She'd ignored her. 

It stings.

Deciding to keep her attention on the frontal part of the lecturing hall, she gets started. 

It is surprising how intent her students seem, most keenly asking questions often leading to cross hall discussions where Lexa would intervene to point out thought patterns and links. The session becomes a floating array of information, most people clearly having done their reading and quite a few of them genuinely fascinated with the study of philosophy. A ginger boy in the front row announces that he'd rob a bank if he could have any power, a girl with funny glasses questions what morality would be when banks are robbed in a capitalistic world, a self righteous politics major declares bankruptcy if powers existed, a squeaky fellow coughs for a better part of the discussion and a long armed girl thumps him over the back as he tries to regain his breath. Ideology after ideology comes into play, even for a first lesson, questions interconnect in a beautiful spiral of knowledge and wisdom. The difference between book smart and people smart is brought out. Names are learnt, friends are made and scoffs occasionally happen. 

Lexa lives in the moment happily, her passion for her study only further increasing as she sees the fervour with which topics are addressed and the sleepy students she'd seen earlier all come to life in a class they know they can converse in. Where no opinion is completely without foundation. The class wide discussion comes to an end and no part of it bothers her. Nothing goes wrong.

Except for a particularly quiet boy farting rather loudly mid-sentence. 

That, and Clarke staring at her phone, not once looking up, not once involving herself. Even Lincoln and Octavia had jumped into the conversation, the latter not even having registered but still simply sitting in. 

"Do we have any assignments in Week 3?" Lincoln speaks up, raising his voice a little. He seems to be clutching onto a little planner, which Octavia peers at curiously beside him. 

Lexa is grateful for the chance to look at where he sits, because it gives her a chance to glaze across Clarke briefly. To wander past her features and feel a wave of admiration pass over her like a summer breeze. 

She answers, not delaying, "let me check what I've got planned for all of you". 

A few people groan. 

People have already begun packing up, putting away the textbook they'd brought along that they hadn't much referred to. Those who hadn't done any reading being grateful for no sudden questions being directed at them. Bags shuffle about along with stray papers and the occasional pen falling or getting knocked off. Lexa flips through a thick, embossed planner, skimming between her notes beside each section labelling a particular course week and notices nothing she'd thought of assigning for Week 3. 

She then instinctively glances up, scolding herself for looking and yet trying to catch a glimpse of the blonde so far off. 

Clarke doesn't look up at all. 

She still appears to scroll through her phone, sometimes showing something to Octavia who nods deeply and sometimes giggles. Lexa resists the urge to call on her. To ask her to offer something to the class. To question her silence. Was she okay? To ask her to contribute something. Anything. 

_Please._

This is when Lexa recognises the familiar bitterness of disappointment. The salty defiance that comes with having your ego poked with a long, hot prodding stick. 

Why did she have to beg for a student to contribute? If she didn't want to, it was her loss and she's being marked on participation, isn't she? Can't participate? Fine. But she couldn't ignore a lecture forever, could she? Didn't she want to do well? She feels a petty sort of anger spittle around her temple and her head throbs a little, the onset of a headache coming in. It only adds to her feelings at the moment, no calm before the storm to quell her rattled ego. 

"Write an essay on what you think Ethics and Logic are and how they affect people," she almost shouts, controlling her voice just as she begins delivering the second topic. 

One person, saddened, groans quite loudly while everyone else, stunned by the sudden order, begins scribbling down notes to remind themselves. 

"It'll be 10% of your final grade and will have no right answer, but merely show how much of today's discussion you absorbed and your understanding of the concepts," she adds. 

The person groaning, begins nodding in approval, a bit more confident with a no-right-answer essay. 

She glares at Clarke. 

"Due next week". 

More than 90% of the class groan this time. Clarke has no reaction. 

She feels somewhat disheartened at having to hear the disapproval, but it seems more comic since most of the students already seem to work out what they're writing and some even begin scribbling intro's right where they stand as others flee the hall. She'd not meant to assign it to them now, the assignment being one for week 5 and her being tyrannical, now a possibility. But considering three weeks of reading leave, she waves off the minor guilt. More so, she can't brush off that she'd used her rights as a professor to try garner the attention of the blonde woman. Have even a hint of attention shown. Pique her interest. Or her hatred.

Most of the class has left by the time she makes out the silhouette of Clarke walking by her, not turning to look at her or acknowledge her as she expects. 

Lexa can't help it and she hates herself for the wonder she feels in her own eyes as she looks up at the woman. 

"Clarke?" 

The blonde tucks her heels in and sharply turns around. 

"Yes? What?" She asks, her expression blank and staring directly into Lexa's face. Boring through her, more than looking at another person. 

"You seem distracted," Lexa replies. "Is everything okay?" 

She knows it's not the best question and she doesn't consider it one that could be answered with anything worthwhile. But she just can't damn help it. 

"Yeah, everything's fine".

Clarke's features remain impartial, but her eyebrows seem to press together, bothered.

She suddenly walks up to the desk where Lexa sits down in her chair, the latter rolling away a little at the invasive approach. 

"Before I forget," Clarke announces. She then presses a crumpled five dollar note at the far end of the table, nowhere near Lexa or where her hand can reach. Practically at the edge and asking to be blown off and down throughout the university block. There's a false smile, forced and uncomfortable and menacing on Clarke's face. She wears it confidently, like a mask she knows she has to put on. 

_Or, maybe the face that she now wears because that's how she feels about me,_ Lexa thinks.

Lexa knows when she is unwelcome and when she's being brushed off and swept away like an uncomfortable tick. Like an itch that someone would burn their skin off to not scratch. She feels about the same, her gut twisting into a somber pain. 

She's confused for the first time in a long time, it's violent shaking of her head numbing her as she tries to figure out what she's done wrong and how she can fix it. _If_ she can fix it. 

Had it been Anya's comment about uni kids? 

The way she'd dismissed someone who'd invited her into their house? She shuts her eyes, just as she watches the blonde walk away, realising how awful she'd been. How horrible she begins to feel for her actions. 

So much for being a youth education winner. So much for being smart professor of the family. 

She resents every word she'd said without even the influence of alcohol to back her up. She regrets having to face the burning indifference in Clarke's eyes. She hurts quietly as the lecture hall empties completely and she is left to the muddle of her own thoughts. 

As Clarke begins writing her essay at home, she thinks about nothing else but how hurt she is, too. 

 

 

 

 


	9. Science

The dial tone on her mobile phone fades as her call is answered.  
“Hey mom,” Clarke greets, resigned as she rolls over in bed and pulls warm sheets in closer around her bare back.   
“Clarke, honey,” the familiar voice of her mother says before clenching in a snappy sounding motion on the chewing gum in her mouth. “It’s been a while since you’ve reported in”.  
“Is everything okay? Everything okay with college?” Abby Griffin asks next, grunting as she pulls on a musty, root in front of her.   
Squatted as she is against the ground, the fresh, earthy smell of fertiliser and the worn gloves she wears don’t much help with the predicament of gardening in cold weather. With what she can grow, at least. Spinach being in season, she spoons in some seeds into an eggshell, balancing the phone against her jaw and shoulder blade. Clarke imagines she’s called at an odd time, since her mother doesn't prompt her for further answers.   
Or she thinks.   
“Can you hear me?” Abby asks, a bit more concerned.   
“Yeah, sorry,” Clarke replies. “College is okay”.  
This time, Abby places aside her gloves and takes a seat on the rocky paved steps of her porch. Her maternal and medical instinct kicking in as she recognises the falsity in her daughters tone.   
She coaxes, “You don't sound oka-”  
“I have some issues with-” Clarke stops herself form continuing the sentence.   
She knows telling her mother she’s having problems with her love life and let alone that concerning a professor is something she’d rather not approach. More so, Abby would worry about her endlessly and call frequently to ask her more often how she is. A question she doesn’t completely have an answer to then and there and one she doesn’t want thrown over her head like a heavy metal gauze trying to trap her beneath the sea.  
“Just some class schedule stuff,” she elaborates.   
“Class scheduling, huh?” Is the flat prompt she gets in return, which doesn't sound convinced at all. She knows her mother wouldn’t pry much, something that Raven and Abby shared which made a world of difference to the blonde when she started going through depressive episodes during her bachelor’s. The support was there, but within the right amounts. Never too overbearing, never too absent.   
“Which classes are you taking, again?”  
“Philosophy,” Clarke says in a depressed monotone.  
Abby, sticks her feet out, checking her rain boots for any excess dirt. “So, that clashing anywhere?”  
“Sort of, but how are you, Mom?” Clarke asks, attempting a lousy change of subject.   
Her mother completely ignores it.   
“Change things around if they clash, but never do night classes. They’re bad for your eyes and heart”.   
The blonde chuckles, retorting, “You’re chewing gum for your eyes and heart?”   
Abby smiles this time, a bit of her concern littering away as she holds onto the playfulness of her only child (whom she misses more than she admits).   
She quips, “They keep my teeth fresh, miss talk-back!”  
Clarke misses her mother as well, but she refuses to say it out loud. Not wanting to feel her eyes pricking with tell-tale tears or have her mother get croaky over the phone. She misses her more than ever, between the confusing wisps of cob-web like frustration which is her crush and the need to successfully pass one final class before she can get out of school squeezing in on her. She misses her mother being around to berate her when she slipped, but also patch her up soon after the fall. Misses her being around to help her figure things out.  
“What’s the hypothesis?” Her mother asks, happy to be using one of their old inside jokes.  
Clarke complies, taking refuge in a simple moment where she is yet again 9 and watching anaesthetic and a plaster go over her skinned elbow.   
“Bachelor done, a final minor to go with it and then into the field. The same as before…” She drawls, repeating her goals for her career just as she’d done each year and after every examination. It helped her keep level-headed and it allowed her to feel like she’d ticked a mental check list.   
“You’ll be fine, okay?” Someone honks a car rather loudly where Abby is.   
“I know, Mom. I’ve got you”.  
“Yes, but you’ve got you too and that’s always a good thing”.   
Clarke nods to no one in particular.   
“I’ll call you later, I’ve gotta go,” she says with a stronger resolve. “Love you”.   
She hears her mother say the words back, heartfelt and always meaning every part of it before she hangs up. When they’d first been apart, it had been very hard to hang up at once understanding how far away they’d be from each other’s daily happenings and Thursday night casseroles. Hanging up now is done easily, but it hurts just like it did that first time and she feels her eyes well up. Her frustration steams, bubbles and fumes with the little tears that have yet to roll down the right side of her face as she continues to lay in bed. That something so stupid would bother her, frankly, pisses the crap out of her.  
‘So Lexa thinks you’re a silly blonde? She told her sister so!’   
No.   
She wouldn’t have it. Forget being individually targeted like that out of all the class, being called ‘silly’, annoys the hell out of her. It feels like pushing against a toothache with her tongue - it hurts, but she can't leave it alone.  
Clarke practically leaps out of her bed, her hair falls in disarray across her face as she drapes the duvet around her shoulders in one fluid motion. She has shorts on, not having peeled them off after writing the draft for her less-than-average and entirely half-hearted essay. She finds herself facing the same open document on her old laptop and as much as her bed is inimical to getting any work done, she sits down: empty stomach, 2pm clock and all rage, to write an essay like no other.   
Citations left and right, direct quotes from fellow students and a structure to be envied. A quick read-through of the guidelines they’d been sent details the essay having to be within 3000 words and she intentionally goes above it. Pounding out each letter comically hard and unnecessarily passionately.   
When she clicks save for the third time in a row and shuts her laptop screen, she expects to feel relieved - even happy. Instead she finds her morale soundly dampened and even the afternoon shadows around her seem to be thicker than usual. As if they can sense the false feeling of success in her. The familiar sense of annoyance laps at her like a dog with no teeth, gumming her outside to find a way in.  
‘What the fuck.’  
Lexa Woods still sits on a plume pillow in the fortress of her mind, her scandalous image laughing at her, mocking her. And she doesn’t want her in their at all. Doesn’t want to give her mind any limp excuse to even briefly like the woman. Even gently think of the woman. She had to get her out.   
A tight bra goes on and her loose hair is tied up.   
Her current canvas is dragged out of the confines of its untouched world and Clarke beings painting like a madwoman. She chugs water down at some stages, alcohol at others and paint water twice, accidentally.   
Bright, cream tones splash and wriggle between crisp lines of dark brown, black and grey. Stroke by stroke, anger in each line but the precision of skill brings a restless sort of life to her portrait. There is emotion in every smidge of acrylic and the result is a brilliantly painted Lexa glaring back at her. At least, she wanted her to glare. To be what she is. Someone who looks at everything distastefully. Someone you question morally. If she didn’t hate it so much, she would have thought it was okay. That at least she’d gotten the image out of her head, that she could now burn it away. There would be no outline of procrastination, no ‘you have a painting you haven’t completed’ whispers and certainly no ‘it has to look good’ self-doubting pressure.   
‘It’s wretched and I hate it. That’s all.’  
The reality being it is ridiculously beautiful.   
Still fuelled by her anger, she flips open her laptop with surprising force and clicks print. She wanted to be done with it all. Green light, red light, silly blonde - bullshit.   
Clarke had turned her essay from a 2 out of 10 to something she wanted to smash into Lexa’s scowling lips. Something she might as well do, she figures. She grabs the papers from the loud whirring, buzz that her printer tray is, involving some blank sheets in the mix as she makes up her mind about submitting it early. Not everything has to be emailed, she tells herself. She’d submit it in person if she damn well wanted to, she scolds. Her eyebrows remain permanently fixed between the bridge of her nose and the light tensions of a headache worm underneath the skin of her face.  
Her phone buzzes and she snatches it from her bedside table. Her jaw clenches.  
Lexa Woods: ’Hi Clarke. I’m sorry for my sister’s words the other night. Could I buy you a coffee to apologise?’  
How could Lexa just text her like that? As if they were friends? She scoffs, a manic chuckle in her throat.  
The science of irrational behaviour is one that has been studied and looked into as long as people have existed. The fixes to such a thing being inhumane in the past, uncalled for in the present and horridly incorrect in most cases. Clarke doesn’t care if she’s a jumble of all these things as she types back a short, curt reply.  
‘Meet me at the Ark in 15.’  
She isn’t asking, she isn’t polite about it and she just doesn’t care. She’d drop this class if she had to. Respect is earned and never taken unfairly. She had her bachelor in anthropology and her mother knew people in the field. She didn’t need a damn philosophy class. She didn’t need to feel all these things and channel them into a exploding rubber band ball being sawed in half.   
She sprints out into the cold, almost forgetting to throw on a jacket as her essay flaps in the wind beside her numbing fingers. Her anger fuels her feet and wars her body on and soon she’s run past quite a few blocks till the familiar flat, square shape of The Ark begins slipping into view.   
If steam could whistle out of her ears and fog around her nostrils, it would.   
To the right of the building, dimly lit in the marshmallow clouds that block the sun, the cafe’s car park is almost empty, except for two cars and a motorbike chained to a pole. She recognises one of the cars and more so, the driver behind the wheel. Her heart is caked with salt and blood as she makes her way over swiftly. Panting heavily as she struggles to regain her breath. By the time her feet have crunched gravel and made it to the driver’s seat, her breath has shallowed out and Lexa looks up at her stunned and unable to open her car door as Clarke blocks it with her body.   
Lexa takes off a glove and places it on the passenger seat beside her, her bun propped higher on her head than usual and clicks a button inside the car to lower her window.   
She peeks out of it a little, and removes her glasses as they fog up almost instantly.   
“Clarke, are you okay? Did you run all this way?” Lexa questions softly.   
The blonde holds out her essay, rolled up and jutting out of her clenched fingers like a weapon.   
She spits back, “Here’s your paper. I decided to print it for you. If that’s not too silly”.   
Lexa’s face drops, her cheeks reddening as her she purses her lips.   
She says, “I’m sorry, Clarke. I never said that about you”.   
The blonde is far from convinced. She releases her grip on the papers in her hand, unstapled they fall in a mess at Lexa’s brake pad.   
“I’m dropping this cla-”  
Lexa interrupts unintentionally, “She gets like that around the people I like”.  
Clarke huffs, “The people you what?”  
Her eyebrows tense further and she has a disgusted snarl on her face. She bends in to try gauge if she’d heard right. Lexa unbuckles her seatbelt and moves further out of the window, which the blonde finds odd but, boy, she wanted to see this explanation crash and burn.  
“The people I like,” Lexa says again, this time more confidently and directed undeniably straight at her.   
She looks right into her eyes, her gaze moving lower till she is simply staring at Clarke’s lower lip. Her eyes seem to gloss over and she reaches up with one hand to tug on the other woman’s jacket, bringing her lower and closer. Their foreheads are nearly touching when Lexa moves her lips up to Clarke’s own.   
A bolt of panic jolts Clarke out of the mesmerised haze she’s in and she defensively moves out of the way, feeling soft, tender lips graze past her cheek exuding a warmth unknown to her skin in the cold afternoon air.  
Their hearts thump loudly together. They stare at each other. One with eyes wide. The other with sullen regret.   
‘Oh God,’ they both think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've become ridiculously busy and ill. I'll be trying to write more and post sooner! I hope you're all well x


	10. Formal Logic

Almost everything in life tends to have a set of rules, whether you follow them or not. Rules are rules, and your adherence to them is a personal choice, which itself is a rule. Humans are mortal. You and I are human, therefore we are mortal. Formal logic is making deductions based on rules that are Captain Obvious as hell. The most evident things.   
Lexa’s first instinct, as someone who has overstepped her boundary in a foolish attempt to convey her feelings, is to apologise. She doesn’t know what’s taken ahold of her, what pushed her into even thinking she could get closer, reach closer to this far off silver lining in her empty grey, cloud of a world by the name of Clarke. She cannot bare the vacant, yet overpowering stare that she receives.   
Clarke remains stunned, fixed in position beside the car door.  
The most polite of thunder rumbles above them, rain beginning to spit here and there. A drop catches Lexa’s glasses and the tip of Clarke’s nose, sliding off its precipice and falling to the ground.  
“I’m sorry,” Lexa finally breathes, looking away. “Thanks for your essay. I’ll drive you home”.  
Clarke reaches up to wipe off a few droplets of water from her brow.   
“If you’re comfortable with that,” Lexa adds, apprehensive of the lack of answer.  
The blonde nods, feeling her face burn up a bit as her thoughts truly begin to process the world around her. It’s as if she’s just now adjusting to her environment after coming out of a dark tunnel, albeit one where Lexa had tried to kiss her?  
‘Oh shit, Raven is gonna have a lot to say’.   
She couldn’t keep this from her friend, could she? She’d always told her everything, but this… it feels different. It is different. It feels like a secret. Wait, wasn’t she dropping this class? Was that what she was saying last?  
Thought after thought shoots at her, she makes no move to dodge them, letting them accumulate as she tries to grapple with the central matter at hand. She takes a seat in the car, the familiar leather scent masking in with the last whiffs of caustic rain before the door shuts with a loud clitch!  
The automatic gear between them moves from ‘R’ to ‘D’ and across it’s valley, Lexa feels her own barrage of opinions and musings begin to pound at the gates of her mind. A wave of guilt and worry, mixing together, like the gravel and acid rain beneath the car’s tyre tracks.  
‘I haven’t even asked her out and yet, here I am’.   
A cord wraps itself around her throat, like a python, squeezing as it angrily wheezes to her about her lack of professionalism, how embarrassing this entire ordeal is and how pathetic it is, to feel this rejected because of her own uncalled for advances.   
Not even a proper try. Will she ignore it happened? Will we both? 

The drive to Clarke’s apartment is a swift one, and even then time seems to stretch between them. It is an uncomfortable silence, and each time Lexa makes to say something, to apologise primarily, she finds herself unable to do so.   
The python crushes her lungs into humbled stagnation.   
She tries to form words, eloquently if not appropriately and yet, they only bubble out like oozing sap, uncoordinated and formless. Letters don’t match each other, words not following adjectives or conjunctions. Better to not say anything, not till the right chance came. And even when it did, she’s not sure what she could possibly say to make this better - to fix it.   
Could she fix it?   
She pulls into the driveway, its path bushes now trimmed, even if they barely hold their dead leaves in place.  
Lexa settles in her seat, held in place by her seatbelt, sure she is ready to talk. Properly. She’d ruminated on her thoughts long enough - her feelings. Every other evening, whenever her mind would give her a moment to think of things that lightened her mood. She’d been working her way up to these words from the first time she’d seen Clarke and felt something. These emotions are recited poetry now, memorised by-heart and ready for the world. Ready for Clarke to hear them.   
She turns, only to find an open passenger door and Clarke’s ass in her face as she makes to get out of the vehicle.   
Lexa jerks her face away, so quick her glasses nearly fly off.   
She’d done enough inappropriate touching for today, and pushing your nose into someone’s backside isn’t the most charming thing, especially not after the way she’d fucked up earlier. Failed-kiss to ass-face, isn’t the impression she wants the other woman to have - even if she has no clue what Clarke thinks of her now. Thinks she’s completely and totally disgusted.   
Her heart drops further, like a large boat into a waterfall with no way out. No large stone to steer into, no plank to walk off of to safety. Her boat is full of holes and it only punctures with more enthusiasm as the blonde walks away and around the car.  
Lexa grabs her door handle, yanking it open and walking out herself till she stands right in front of Clarke. Plumes of fog, rasp about their noses as the cold autumn air chills them.  
It’s now or never, she decides.   
Apologies first, prompt second… Or would that ruin the romance? She’d never been one to do things completely right, mostly because she’d shy away and prefer distant pining to engaging. To flirting too much. Flowers and champagne. Would Clarke like that? Was she like that?   
Lexa gazes at her still and her heart swells.   
‘She’s something, alright’.   
She sighs internally, at first, trying to contain her deep admiration for the woman.   
‘God, she’s beautiful’.   
And then, she sighs externally, ready to admit her feelings. Ready to take the plunge head first into the waterfall. Ready t-  
“What’s your full name?”  
Taken aback, Lexa answers at once, “Lexa Denman Woods”.   
“I’m Clarke Jane Griffin,” Clarke wraps her arms around her chest bracing for the cold, “When’s your birthday?”  
“May 3rd 1990”.   
“Taurus, huh,” there is a pause and a head-shake of understanding, “mine is the 28th of August 1993”.  
Knee-jerk responses aside, Lexa doesn't know what to make of the sudden interview.  
“Clarke…?”  
“Are you a feminist?” This is asked a bit more seriously.  
“Yes,” she responds. “Intersectional,” she adds.   
Clarke nods deeply, seeming to brighten up at that. Lexa still has no space to say anything of her own volition.  
“Were you trying to kiss me?”   
Lexa blushes heavily, she can feel the patches of red curling around her clavicles and neck. She hesitates embarrassed, but decides to be honest.   
Now or never, right?  
“Yes”.   
She doesn’t say anything more, humbled by her own admission. Almost jumped by her own confession being so simple and not as articulate as she’d wanted it to be. She feels like a puddle, waiting to be judged before being swept into a drain. Lain bare and vulnerable and yet freed. She can only agree to her attraction and await judgement. She half-expects the woman to walk away and never speak to her again and the other half is sure she’d just been rejected and is now being ridiculed.  
So much for poetry.  
“Did you want to try that again on,” Clarke looks away seeming to grapple with her schedule for a free day before gazing back at Lexa, “Wednesday night?”  
Clarke doesn't say what that is - Lexa doesn't need her to.  
“Yes,” she breathes.   
Yes, yes, yes! She affirms in her head.  
“I, uh,” there is an awkward pause as Clarke tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, “left my essay with you and won’t be attending classes anymore. Could I do the assignments and submit them online?”   
“It’s the only course I have left to graduate,” she hastily adds.   
Lexa nods, smiling at nothing in general and nowhere in particular. The grin plastered on her face.  
“Okay,” Clarke affirms even as her voice falters. “I’ll text you”.  
She turns on her heel, the evening air blowing on her face with gusto as she begins pacing away. Clarke stops, mid-step, walking back to where she was and closes the space between Lexa and her with an affectionate hug. Lexa is jumped by the sudden gesture, but her arms fold around the blonde’s hips, settling easily around her back and she tilts her head inwards, breathing in the familiar scent of fruity perfume. Clarke’s hair tickles Lexa’s cheek and she places her chin on the offending locks, revelling in this one moment of gentility and something close to happiness. She feels the other woman pull away and loosens her arms, making to move back, when she feels the undeniable and most gentle touch of lips on her right cheek. It is genuine and tender, and warms her skin, sending a wave of goosebumps along her neck.  
When Lexa drives homes that afternoon, it’s the happiest she’s felt in a long time. Almost ever. The soft sounds of the band Weekday sing her into grins and the feather light kiss on her cheek, still ghosts agains her skin.

*****

An evening text buzzes Lexa’s phone up on Wednesday night. She stops mid rubbing of moisturiser on her face to pace across the room and snatch it up to her eyes. Little tickles shimmy inside her belly as she reads Clarke’s name.  
‘Hey :)’.  
She types a reply back, placing her phone down to finish blotting against the dry patch of skin between her eyebrows.   
‘Hey you. shall I come pick u up?’   
It is only as soon as she clicks send that she realises the two different ways she’d spelt the word ‘you’. Mixed signals much. A touch embarrassing.   
Ignoring it all, she adds on another text. ‘Do you like hot chocolate?’  
She holds her hair up, putting her phone away again. Would a bun suit, or would she wear her hair down. Considering how often she wears her hair up in the classroom, she guesses she’d wear it out in a dining room.   
‘A bedroom,’ she muses, chuckling at her own horrid joke.  
Her phones buzzes yet again. ‘Yes, Blondies?’  
’Is that near yours?’   
‘Sort of, where do u live?’  
She breathes a sigh of relief. So, Clarke does use ‘u’.  
‘I live on Tond Crescent’.  
‘So, I booked us a table at Choceurs anyway and u live closer to it than me!’  
Lexa raises her eyebrows, almost impressed by the blonde presumptuously booking a table.   
‘That gourmet chocolate place?’  
‘Yeah :)’.  
‘Cool. Be there in 25’.   
Lexa nearly shoves her phone into the pocket of her jeans, but then pulls it out to add on a final message. ‘By there, I mean I’m picking you up.’  
She shrugs on a dark coat, folding its lapels down before it crushes the collar of her long sleeve shirt. Black always works with white, but not when you crush your clothes enough to leave wrinkles for weeks. Getting a new iron had worked wonders for her, her sister was always good at gift giving. The year before she’d given her a carving dagger that claimed the living room mantle, just above the doorway. This year it had been an iron, simply because she’d texted Anya about her previous one steaming into oblivion and dying. Christmas was a practical one in the Woods household, their father had only tolerated that much.   
Out of the little he did tolerate, he drew a line at lesbians and the poor. His short breath drew a line on him.  
She slips her feet into a pair of heels at first, then loafers and finally settles on a pair of soft flats. She then reaches out to the open closet beside her, multiple hangers hold various outfits and pulls out a midnight blue dress and holds it against her frame. Would a dress work better than a formal casual shirt? She angles her face, checking her reflection again. She’d have to iron it, she figures, noticing more wrinkles. A lack of her going out as well as a habit of crushing her clothes hangers into one clump when finding clothes for her classes.   
The iron was far too valuable a gift. She thinks to text Anya a quick thank you and stops to ponder on if she should have bought Clarke a gift and if blue was really better than black and maybe a dress would flatter her more than pants and would she look ready for a class and perhaps, yes, the dress is far less professor and more so, date. Lexa pauses then, a burst of fizzy-drink like warmth in her belly as one thought resonates deeply in her mind and heart.  
‘Clarke likes me’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the kudos and comments. I hope you're all well x


	11. Life Sciences

The science of a crush is something we wish we could put down to a mix of the right words and the right time, or just damn fine, dashing good looks. Chemically, we preach that the cacophony of Dopamine, Norepinephrine and Serotonin is what drives us crazy. What anchors us deep in the harbour of fancying someone.

Lexa thinks about this. 

It tickles her thoughts as she drives to Clarke, it tackles her as the blonde steps into the car swathed in a thicks long coat and especially trips her up mentally as they walk into Choceurs. Clarke mentions something about having booked a rooftop table, and she nods as they’re led up a set of steel grate stairs and wooden slat walls to the open evening air where the sun has just set. Being a Wednesday night, they soon realise they are the only two on the terrace and comfortably can choose the one little table at the far end in front of a long, stretching balcony. Garlands of greenery are draped about the place and grown up metal stands occasionally hold up tarps and the clear, glass ceiling above them. It’s like sitting within an industrialised terrarium and gives off more than a rustic vibe. Lexa looks up, taking the twinkle of a few stars beginning to peak over dark night sky clouds, before she feels a flicker of movement and her view is clouded by Clarke gazing at her. 

She considers looking up, but transfixed thinks,

‘Who’d want any other view?’

“Did you want to come inside?” Clarke asks, shy yet snarky in tone. 

The woman then immediately looks away and it is something Lexa hadn’t expected, something she hadn’t experienced with the woman except in annoyance. 

It’s a change.

Lexa shakes her head in agreement, realising she’d been standing at the doorway to the terrace, simply staring around her. She makes to remove her scarf as she walks in, but decides to keep it on, just in case. She isn’t sure what the ‘in case’ was, but something about getting too comfortable made her feel conscious. She settles to unbuttoning the top button of her shirt, using one hand to undo it and air out her chest. She feels nervous, she knows now. The state of their chemistry had changed, the emotional lift between them had escalated. Has elevated.

They take a seat at the same time, the soft music playing around them not covering up the sounds of chairs moving and clothes crumpling. The table they sit on either side of is round, metal and simple, leaving little space between them - just enough to reach across.

Clarke takes her coat off, finally.

A tight black evening dress caresses her curves, elegant and almost too sophisticated for the place. Clarke doesn’t fail to notice Lexa admiring it, albeit with dirtier thoughts than she can imagine. 

“Oh, I’m definitely gonna spill chocolate on myself,” she says, smiling. “Don’t be fooled”. 

Lexa grins, shrugging in acceptance as she takes off her scarf and jacket. Her skirt and shirt work just as well with her date’s outfit and a true sense of comfort cajoles around them. They can hear the occasional sound of a platter being cluttered in the kitchen downstairs, the mumbles of multiple conversations spilling out into the building and the gentle thump of jazz hooting out from speakers here and there. 

Clarke folds her hands in, tucking her feet underneath her chair as she lean in and looks right at Lexa. Her eyebrows are nearly touching and she seems poised to ask a question. Either way, she looks far too confident. Far too attractive. Lexa doesn't know how to process the moment. Doesn’t know how to completely take in what she’s seeing. She lets out a great sigh she doesn’t realise she’d been holding for so long and blames the lighting around them for the ridiculous beauty in front of her. The ambient golden hues of the lamps above light up Clarke’s curls and curves, bones and brea-

They light her up in a way which is surreal. 

“So, how was your day?” Lexa asks, knowing full well that it’s such a ‘proper’ question. But, they had to begin somewhere.

Clarke replies, “I have the craziest story about my friend Jasper”. 

“Do you want to tell me?”

“I didn’t think I would!” 

“Sarcasm isn’t the sign of a wise mind”.

“Are you telling me I’m too young for you?”

“No, Clar-“

A loud boisterous laugh. A confident, sexy one, Lexa sighs to herself.

A menu comes by and a sharing platter is placed between them, they both angle their bodies forward as if trying to reach at anything but the chocolate truffles parked right under their noses. 

One of them chuckles every so often, Lexa talks more reservedly but her stories expand till she is soon giggling along with Clarke who tells stories through her hands. Her body moves with her words, the right tilt and swerve for the right voice and tone as they relate one story after another. 

A kindergarten mystery, a middle school drama, a high school debacle. 

A truffle is recommended. The clock ticks away on its own timeline. Their evening fades into one exhilarating moment. 

“Really? A tattoo?”

“Yeah,” Lexa unbuttons her shirt a bit more, fully aware of what she’s showing and turns around to display her back to Clarke, “theres another one but I have to take my shirt off for that”.

A truffle makes someone scrunch up their nose. The noises from downstairs begin to diminish to just a late night crowd, the bar open and the world a twinkle of lights in old buildings. 

Clarke says, “my mother didn’t like the idea of me leaving, but it had to be done”. 

“I understand,” Lexa states at once, sounding certain in her words. 

A hot chocolate for two is ordered.

“The heart knows what it wants,” Clarke speaks softly gazing at Lexa.

“And all that,” she adds. 

Her curls catch the light again, the blue of her eyes standing out like ripples on waves and she exhales deeply, her chest deflating. She laughs at her own admission, cliche and cheesy as it sounds. 

“I know it sounds silly”.

Her hands reach down, tenderly picking up the mug placed in front of her. Maroon nails skittering on the edge of the ceramic as it is brought up to her mouth. She hums in satisfaction, fully content with having ordered milk chocolate. Her other hands reaches up to brush a stray strand of hair out of her face, the locks constantly threatening to cover up her face. She moves as if a scripted pattern, all her threads locking together in a graceful dance. 

The Goddess Aphrodite herself, in every movement and every, ever so slow blink.

Yet, the stature and weight of word that Athena caries. 

Her lips looks soft. They shine whenever she speaks. Her tongue slides out to lick across her bottom lip, from left to right, twice.

Lexa is enraptured.

She doesn't know if it’s the serotonin from the sweet, saccharine chocolate or if it’s the gorgeous company she shares, but she’s giddy. And, unaware that Clarke feels just the same. In awe of the woman sitting in front of her. Charmed by the smarts, the wit and the personality as much as the looks. There’s something about the brunette’s behaviour, her personality. Something keen. So familiar. So comforting. 

The chocolate mugs are taken away and the door to the balcony shuts again, leaving them to their privacy. By this point, they both have their elbows teetering close to each other and on the table. Lexa has her left arm sideways, a watch with a clear face staring up at the ceiling as minutes continue to pass them by. They look at each other then, briefly, no words spoken, just a look shared. Little sparks fly beneath their cheeks, a current wave passing between their eyes. 

“You're so obvious,” Clarke comments, all of a sudden.

Lexa shoots back, “as if you aren’t”. 

They’re quiet again and it is a silence that isn’t uncomfortable. They're both grinning, looking away from each other, sorely aware that the other is just as shy. Too shy to look at each other and smile. Clarke holds off her better thoughts, asking her to imagine avid ‘this’ on the table and maybe rabid ‘that’ on the floor. Lexa fights off the shiver of anticipation in her shoulders, caressing down her neck and back like an intoxicated lover.

Her watch now reads hours past when they’d first sat down, but the night feels young. She feels young and more so: alive. This tangle between them, this force is so connecting, that she struggles to even think of a word to describe it. To find a word to describe the splendour of spending time with someone who blends so perfectly with her as a person, without even touching her more than once. 

Something beyond words. Something, not _just_ physical. 

Clarke had told her to try again. There is no obstructing platter, plate, spoon or mug between them. Nor a table too wide to hold hands across or pass truffles around. There is only, the smallest amount of space, an empty terrace and the stars above them. 

Just them.

Lexa tries again.

She reaches up to Clarke’s right cheek and pulls on it gently, till their lips touch. Their eyes shut, they inhale deeply and the world around them is a background of shimmery nothingness. Brush upon tender brush, their lips move together as the kiss continues. Long and gentle, the rhythm never breaks, never fades, never mismatches. Their passion deepening, their arms bump, their elbows huddle as their bodies try to push in closer together. The little table holds their hips apart. Lexa’s lips part briefly, to take a breath in before she sucks softly on Clarke’s upper lip. 

Lexa almost gasps then. A wet tongue tip brushes across her own lower lip before pressing against her tongue. She grins halfway into the action, her heart picking up like the skips of a stone on an electric pond. She continues her soft, longing kisses as Clarke alternates between using her lips and her tongue ever so subtly. 

The minute is enchanting. 

The feel of hands entangling in hair, the bumping of noses as they turn chins and kiss in every angle they find and the smell of perfume and a forest’s night sky all around them. The need to touch further. 

The shallow breath. The taste of chocolate. The thumping hearts. 

Definitely Serotonin. 

 


	12. Feminist Philosophy

 

Equality is something that society has put a spotlight on these days, and rightly so. Differences are what make us individually interesting but as a whole, we cannot be separated from and discriminated against each other. The world works in a balance, but it thrives on fairness. What you give is what you get. 

And Clarke has no damn idea if she’s supposed to text back after their first date, or if it’s Lexa who should speak up. 

Her phone screen hardly lights up her features as she continues to lay down on her friend’s lap. Parts of the picnic rug Octavia had laid out are soaked through, but some patches remain dry on the grassy spot they’d chosen. A heinous bird chirps in the tree branches above them, scowling at the lot of five people sitting beneath its home. Murphy eyes it back, daring it to shit on his head just so he has an excuse to chase after it. Imaginary shotgun and all.

The blinker where she ought to type, blinks in and out of existence, blank against the canvas of her phone.

“Whose idea was it to sit out on the grass in winter?” Raven announces, crossing her legs and plunking onto the ground. 

The bundle of papers in her hands jumps a little, but settles against her chest just the same as she pointedly looks at Octavia. Octavia plays with a bit of Clarke’s hair, adjusting the girl’s head on her left thigh before pointing with her thumb to Lincoln. The muscled fellow shrugs, pointing back at his girlfriend. 

“Alright,” Octavia admits, sighing. “It was mine, but it’s the first week of spring. It’s gonna get better, miss I-wear-jackets-all-the-time”.

Raven glares at the girl, before attempting to retie her ponytail for the sixth time that morning. She eyes Clarke, mindlessly staring at her phone, her fingers not moving over the screen.

“Clarke is literally staring at her phone,” she states. 

Her hair tie snaps. She swears.

Octavia quips, “Yes, yes, we all do that. Damn the millennials”. 

“No, she is literally staring at her phone”.

Clarke looks up, having heard her name or something that sounded like it. The world had become a hazy buzz around her as she formulated one text after the other, one greeting after the next. She can feel Octavia’s hand grab her phone and snatch it away as she jumps up in protest. She attempts to grab it, while the other girl holds it face down not yet reading the screen but not quite giving it to her either.

“Who are you texting?” Octavia asks, pretending to flip the phone upside to look at it.

“No!” Clarke shouts, reaching for it. 

The phone is thrown deftly to Lincoln, who lets it hit his chest before falling into the basin of his arms. He clicks the lock screen shut and the holds it away form his body, grinning as Clarke tries to push past Octavia’s arms, while Raven joins in on holding her back. 

“Guys, I’ll t-“

Raven begins tickling her sides. 

“Fuck’s sake, I’ll tell you! Just give me my phone!”

Murphy leaps in, sitting up from his lazy stance on his side to snatch the phone from beneath Lincoln’s fingers. He nods at Clarke, smiling, before throwing it in her direction. Several pairs of eyes follow the spectacle before Clarke pushes out her arm, and lets the base of her phone smack into her palm, retreating to the safety of sitting upright and away from her grabby friends. She faces them, angling her body so no sneak-attack would take her by surprise.

Murphy winks at her before settling back in place, his eyes shutting as he imagines lounging on a beach somewhere far from the grounds of the university they are on. Perhaps, somewhere with a lighthouse and infinite beer…

“So, you remember how I told you,” Clarke looks at Raven, “how Lexa was being weird?”

“Oh my god are you two texting now?” Octavia shouts. “Also, you told Rey first, you Sasquatch!”

Clarke raises her hands in defence. She says, “She lives next door to me! Rey saw when she came over to get her stuff!”

“WHAT!” Lincoln and Octavia yelp together. 

“She came over to your apartment?”

“She got her stuff? Why did she leave her stuff? Did she sleep over? Oh my gOD I CA-“

“AND YOU’RE TEXTING NOW!”

“Who are we screaming about?” Murphy asks, still laying down, basically nodding away. 

“Lexa Woods!” Octavia screeches. 

“Guys! Keep it down!” Clarke demands, her eyes widening as she tries to look about from her perch. She twists her body, using her elbow to keep her face out of the grass, still gently leaning against Octavia. “We’re just dipping our toes in, alright?”

“So, you’re dating?” Lincoln asks, trying to muffle a chuckle behind his hand.

“Just seeing where things go,” Clarke refutes.

“So… you’re dating?” Octavia chirps in, not at all trying to hide her glee.

“Dating is like way out there, we’re so new to each other”.

“Totally dating,” Murphy announces, laying back down and shutting his eyes again. 

“On the down low, please?” Clarke requests this time, looking to each of her friends. 

They all nod, but giggle nonetheless. It wasn’t often Clarke became this guarded, this coy. Sure, she could call it dating but, her friends knew smitten when they saw it. Raven makes kissing noises and Lincoln slaps his thigh while he laughs at Octavia pulling even more appropriate faces. When Clarke sits up to look at them, they stop all movement - as if no such theatre had been going on. The curtain draws to a close. 

“Subject change!” Octavia says, her giggle settling as she leans forward and lowers her usually high voice. “My mom’s been actin' up again”.

“What do you mean?” Murphy asks, ever the voice of confusion. 

“I talked to her last week and she,” Octavia swallows, using her hands to talk now, “she just, she does the thing where,” she seems to struggle to find the right words, “she guilts me for whatever I say”. 

“I just don’t know how to take it. I get annoyed, ask her to be nicer, she snaps,” she elaborates. “We fight”. 

Clarke’s phone vibrates, but she chooses to ignore it. For now. 

“It’s okay to fight, O,” Raven begins. 

“Not this much,” Octavia replies, a fallen expression settles on her face. “I just wish things weren’t like this”. 

“I know this is gonna come out weird, bu-“

“Already weird,” Murphy adds in, interrupting. 

Raven sneers at him and continues, “We just can’t control some things and it’s not your fault if there are fights. Some people can’t change, y’know? So we just move on”. 

Octavia points a look at Raven, one that seems understanding but one which also shows her inner confusion. It mostly looks like she’s staring blankly. 

“Fuck shit, do you?” Raven offers.

“I’m not an idiot, Rey,” Octavia says, scoffing. 

“Then don’t act it,” Raven snaps. 

They both smile. Murphy groans and grumbles something about getting a room, Lincoln obliviously has his attentionfocussed on taking a photo of a puppy far off. His fingers pinch repeatedly at the screen as he tries to zoom in on the little creature. His thumb a little too big for the action to truly happen.

“O?” Clarke prompts. 

“Hm?” Octavia hums, looking down at the blonde on her lap. 

“I think what Rey wants to say is, i-“

“You don’t have to explain for me!”

“Oh my god, can we have one conversation without interruptions. A scriptwriter would hate us!”

Raven rolls her eyes before waving her hands in a ‘go on’ motion. 

“I think what Raven Reyes,” Clarke pauses to glare at said girl, “means is, if your mom won’t change how she speaks, maybe it’s time you changed how you reacted to her?” 

“Don’t fight fire with fire?” Raven adds in. 

“What did I say about-“

“Don’t react how you usually would, like Clarke here just did,” Raven explains this time.

“I continue to interrupt, she keeps trying to take the steering wheel, she keeps quiet now and this sentence ends”. 

“Take the first step, all that shit,” Raven concludes, realising then how much attention is being paid to her words. Even Clarke seems stunned at the live-action example the girl had just put into play. She was clever and hiding inside a jacket and snark had always been her way of retreating post-exposing herself. 

“Make it happen”. 

Octavia nods, reaching out to tap Raven’s knee. A show of her understanding, before she leans against Lincoln quietly contemplating what had been said and if she could attempt it while pointing out more dogs for the entranced photographer. 

‘Take the first step, make it happen,’ Clarke’s mind says as she whips out her phone. Its dim screen is silhouetted against the plush, fluffy clouds above as they float in a sea-blue canvas. She brings up the conversation with Lexa, making her mind up to text the lady first. Really, put herself out there. Flirt a little more.

‘All that shit,’ as Raven had said.

 

*****

By the time Clarke reaches the third column of philosophy books at the university’s library, her phone is still locked in her hand with an untyped message. She spreads her fingers, running against thick framed covers covering topics on feminism, art, sex and music. Some peruse the structure of society, some bring into question classic issues of life and death and some spout nonsense about goats hunting minerals. 

‘Stop delaying, stop wasting time!’ Her mind scolds her, but she continues to run her fingers as if truly interested in anything outside of the sphere of her thoughts.

Someone coughs somewhere in the East wing of the library, massive as it is. The bright lights above her stand far beyond reach, just enough to see things by but not warm enough to damage the books beneath its glare. She brings her phone up under her own stern scrutiny and absentmindedly walks to the nearest chair and table combo. Taking a seat, she lets her heart do all the talking and her fingers, do all the tapping. 

No, not like that.

‘Hey, I had SUCH A-‘

“Fuck,” she curses, making note yet again that she had to disable autocorrect at some point in her life.

Backspacing removes some of what she’s miswritten. 

‘Hey, I had a great time with you the other night. Wanna come-‘

Clarke truly pauses this time. Was she asking her out again? Should she wait to see if Lexa was just as keen? Wasn’t she supposed to be confident? 

She deletes the unfinished sentence and adds instead, ‘Wanna come over?’

Something flips in her belly. 

An uncomfortable giddiness. 

She puts her phone down on the table, letting her head rest along with it. Who knew texting girls was so hard. She didn’t, any girl before this had been easier. She’d been nervous always, but her confidence took the better side of her personality. It had always been ‘great time, let’s do something else’ or ‘you’re funny, wanna go out again?’. 

But Lexa Woods.

Something about treating things so casual didn’t feel right.

Because this was something, it _is_ something and Clarke damn well cares about this.

Her eyes flit open when she realises what she’s feeling. What she feels for the other girl. Her mind is flooded with thoughts of them together. Her heart spins inwards, wanting more, craving more of this euphoria. 

This was nothing casual to her, this girl _is_ something she feels serious about.

She wanted this to work out.

But don’t we all, always want everything to work out?

She backspaces a word.

Clarke quells herself, taking a deep breath and steadying her heart. She couldn't be a teenager now, she couldn't let herself get ahead when things were still so fresh and new. She couldn’t develop all these big feelings over one damn good night’s conversation and one kiss which was soft, passionate, electrifying, overwhelming…

“Are you reading anything or taking a nap?” A voice spits near her right ear, startling her out of her uncoordinated stream of thoughts. 

She looks up into the face of a scowling librarian’s assistant, a lanky fellow with mop-like hair and a measly moustache balancing on his upper lip. 

“Actually,” Clarke says getting up, “I’m going”.

She grabs her phone almost forcefully off the table, shooting an annoyed look at the boy before heading out of the large building. She didn’t often come to the library to think, in fact she’d mostly zone out in between three books at the place before exams, but this time was different.

When she finally brings her phone up for the last time that evening, making her mind up to simply say she’d had a great time and ask the other girl what she was up to, her eyes truly have a reason to widen. 

Me: ‘Hey, I had a great time with you the other night. Wanna come’.

Somewhere between getting up, getting out and getting off, she’d accidentally hit send. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My life's turned a clear 180 and I don't exist on this plane anymore, but I hope you're all well x


End file.
